


Stardust, Silk and Steel

by CalicoTomcat



Series: Falling Stars [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A Surprising Amount of Original Characters as Worldbuilding filler, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Menstruation, Part one is pretty tame, Part two is where the tags really start to apply, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Swearing, Team as Family, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 163,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalicoTomcat/pseuds/CalicoTomcat
Summary: Cold and alone, Pidge wakes up after the wormhole collapses to find herself in the last part of the universe she had ever expected to be…Home.Part 1: Cosmic Coincidence (Chapters 1-15)Part 2: Picking Up The Pieces (Chapters 16-?)(More tags to be added in time.)





	1. Familiar Constellations

**Author's Note:**

> After watching the entire first season for the sixth or seventh time I couldn’t help but wonder where everyone ended up after the wormhole fell apart. Because I hadn’t yet seen the season 2 trailer, and it was like a month and a half ago, I started writing this. And I kept writing. And writing.
> 
> I decided to focus primarily on Pidge and where I like to imagine she ended up going but I will get to everyone eventually.
> 
> Exactly none of what follows is remotely canon.

 

 

Pidge knows she’s dreaming.

 

She doesn’t know how she knows, not right away, but she knows nonetheless. Everything around her looks and smells and feels so real it’s hard to believe it isn’t. Even the breeze rolling across her skin feels exactly the way she knows a summer breeze should feel.

The biggest clue is probably that she was standing in the clearing before the temple she had met Green in. She never came back to this planet after finding her Lion. She hadn’t felt the need to. There’s no conceivable reason she would be here now.

 

Dreaming.

She’s dreaming.

The last thing she can remember was screaming, she was screaming- consciously she knows there should be no connection between the horrible shrieks of fear and pain in the black abyss of space tickling the edges of her memory and the wet heat of the tropical paradise she finds herself standing in. She knows there’s no connection.

The only sounds around her now are the distant chitters and cries of the local wildlife. It’s disconcerting, but comforting all the same. It’s alien and it’s homely in the same breath.

Wind rustles through the foliage, tickling her face with slow strokes. Strange plants bloom around her in the bright sunlight with colors vibrant and strange and still familiar all at once. Her Lion is at the base of the temple, large, grand, mechanical, yet softer somehow, her edges smoother as she watches the girl with thoughtful golden eyes.

The gentle rumble of Green’s purr sends a chill right through her spine.

She should wake up now.

She knows she should.

She doesn’t want to though. It’s warm here. It’s quiet. Safe. Nobody is screaming. There’s no need to scream here. Nothing hurts.

Green understands. She likes it here too, but she pushes her Paladin anyway. The sensation of the affectionate Lion in her mind almost feels like she’s being groomed with a rough, broad tongue. It makes her smile wryly and she caves in to the soothing pressure of her Lion. The Lion is right. It’s time to wake up.

She immediately wishes she didn’t.

 

The first thing Pidge is aware of when she comes to is how hideously, blindingly _cold_ she is. She has never in her life been so cold. She can feel her bones ache and creak under her weight as she pushes herself slowly up and off the floor with both hands. Her limbs are screaming, burning, _everything_ hurts, and it’s not until she whimpers at the pain of her broken tail that she realizes it’s not _her_ body that is broken. In her surprise her arms give out beneath her and send her crashing back down into the floor. Only the security of her helmet keeps her from breaking her nose or knocking out her front teeth on impact.

It’s Green.

Green is hurt, and from the feel of it she’s hurt really, _really bad_. She’s never been hurt like this before.

Pidge can feel every single injury, every dent and fissure and _loose screw or tangled wire or out of place crystal_ in her Lion and the sensation of it all is overwhelming. She’s never been so in tune with Green before, not to this extent, not even when they formed Voltron, so she’s wholly unprepared for the way she can feel everything down to her _claws_ aching.

Pidge groans weakly into the metal of the floor and screws her eyes shut.

Visions of familiar landscapes of ice and stardust fill her sight and she nearly flies upright. The sensation is enough to make her head spin and she suddenly heaves the dry emptiness of her stomach into her Lion’s cockpit with as much of an apology as she can muster. The feeling of tender pity emanates from the Lion, a gentle stroke on the Paladin’s back, and the cat doesn’t bother complaining otherwise.

Pidge whines in frustration through the last of her sour heaves before falling over on her side. She brings her cold hands up to her face and exhales slowly against the fabric of her gloves as she closes her eyes again. As surprised as she is to find her gaze is connected with her Lion’s, she’s even more surprised with what lies just beyond her Lion.

She can see through Green’s eyes the unmistakable surface of Kerberos, just beyond the horizon where the crew disappeared last year. She stared at the images of the moon after her family disappeared long enough that they were seared into her mind’s eye, a permanent mental scar. She would recognize it in a heartbeat. She _did_ recognize it in a heartbeat. She can even feel her Lion confirming it, agreeing with her assessment of their present location. And if she’s drifting in the space just around Kerberos, then that means…

She’s back in her solar system.

 _Her_ solar system.

 _She’s home_.

Or, nearly home. If Green’s propulsion systems aren’t damaged much (and Pidge thinks she can feel that they are) she would only be a few brief minutes from Earth. Ticks if she really pushed it. She still remembers how fast Blue was that first day. She knows what Green is capable of.

She’s nearly home.

 _Home_.

And she doesn’t even know how to feel about it. Lance would probably be crowing at the top of his lungs and aiming Blue out straight for Earth, and an equally as giddy Hunk probably wouldn’t be far behind him in Yellow. Pidge chuckles at the thought before immediately curling in on herself with a whimper as the laughter rattles her body, rudely informing her that Green is not the only one who sustained serious structural damage after being flung out of that corrupted wormhole.

Just her luck.

Green rumbles, the physical sensation a deep purr that pulses through the entire machine, just as miserably aware of her Paladin’s pain as the human is of her own. The purr at least is soothing, if unusually loud.

Pidge is informed in no uncertain terms that her ribs are broken.

Pidge asks which ribs.

Green only shrugs. Or, she performs the telepathic version of a shrug, obviously invisible but still clearly felt. Ribs are broken. She’s not sure of the exact number. It’s hard for her to tell. The Paladin was tossed around the cabin pretty roughly when they were flung from the wormhole. Pidge lets out a shallow sigh.

The drawbacks of having no seatbelts. For all their advancements Altea had apparently never bothered with basic vehicular safety measures.

Pidge moves her weight onto an elbow as she pushes herself up to take in her Lion’s cockpit. Loose panels, wires, various tools and all sorts of equipment are strewn from wherever it had been tucked away and the whole place looks exactly like a small tornado ripped through it while she was out. None of the interfaces are online, and it’s clearly only by luck that both internal lighting and artificial gravity are still functioning. It’s a mess, but Pidge is eternally grateful for the last item on the list. It makes everything else marginally easier to get a handle on.

And maybe she still has some personal issues with zero-g, but that’s hardly relevant right now.

The radiating pain in her body makes it impossible to stand upright, both her pain and Green’s pulses through her in ugly waves that make her dizzy and numb. She manages to pull herself up on hands and knees before shuffling over to her seat. The moment her fingers touch the armrest the whole seat shifts and reclines, turning itself into a makeshift bed. It’s a surprise, but Pidge is quick to give her Lion her thanks.

She drags her body up onto the seat and holds her breath as it slides slowly into place at the helm. Green tries to be as gentle as she can be when she moves her human up.

The Paladin exhales and tries not to think about the frigid feel of her breath as it clouds up heavy and wet in her face. She tries not to shiver too hard either, though that is a much harder task under the current circumstances.

Pidge wills the displays to life, growling quietly to herself when only a third of them manifest. She apologizes to the Lion, who only lets the Paladin know she agrees. She knows the human wasn’t growling at her and that what the displays can’t tell Pidge she will try to fill in on her own.

So Pidge takes what she can from the screens. It’s not pretty.

The lower jaw of the Lion has a busted hinge on the left side, locking it shut. No weapon, no exit. Her tail is broken in two places but semi-functional though probably still not safe to use, and her chest must have been battered pretty violently by space debris at some point because it looks almost as ugly as Pidge’s own ribs feel. Her front left leg sustained a few surface fractures and dents that are thankfully only superficial. Green will be able to repair all her damage herself given some time and the use of her in-built solar panels. The deeply buried internal crystal that gives Green her particle barrier, however, she cannot reach, and it is so far out of alignment it’s become tangled in nearby wiring and will require some serious flexibility on Pidge’s part to access.

What the displays don’t mention are the busted thrusters on the Lion’s thighs and hind paws, or the tiny misaligned crystals that are supposed to regulate her internal temperature. The parts that make up her artificial pelvis are also severely damaged in multiple places and have removed her ability to use her back legs until they heal. Green notes that fixing that is going to be her first priority.

Pidge decides to make the temperature her first priority. Her trembling hands are so cold they feel like they’re _on fire_ , and she doesn’t want to pull off her gloves to see just how bad the frostbite on her digits must be getting. She doesn’t know how long it’s been this cold and she’s not sure she wants to find out. She steels herself as she slips from the chair.

Crawling down and back to the compartment that gives her access to the temperature crystals takes so long with her aching body that she has to curl up and rest halfway there. On a good day it would have taken mere moments, ticks, but now it was taking her what felt like the better part of an hour to reach.

Green rumbles steadily the entire time in support as her human struggles through.

The panel is easily removed, and when Pidge buries her arm up to the shoulder she can _juuust_ prod the thin crystals back in place with two aching fingers.

The shift in temperature is almost immediate and she laughs as carefully as she can when the visor of her helmet fogs up.

Pidge replaces the panel with a satisfying click before letting herself melt slowly against the warming floor of her Lion.

Green prods Pidge gently in their shared connection. She wants to take a closer look at her Paladin. She’s familiar with altean physiology, because of course she is, and while humans have a similar basic structure she’s not sure how much overlap the two species have. She wants to scan her human thoroughly and be sure nothing vital was damaged during their freefall from the wormhole.

Pidge keeps her attitude to herself, but she’s pretty sure bones are technically vital.

Once she’s finally in her seat again, this time resting on her back and breathing as slowly as her lungs will allow, a soft whirring fills the air and the familiar green lighting in the cockpit changes into a hazy pink. The Lion scans her slowly, running a deep red light over her Paladin in repetitive strokes as she studies the anatomy under the armor. Pidge shares what she knows of human physiology with her Lion to give her a better frame of reference. A soft click signals the shift back to the normal light as Green finishes her scan.

Green feeds the results into Pidge’s mind. Pidge can only smile wryly.

The surface of her entire body is so mottled with her own settled blood that it’s more bruise than anything else, and she’s grateful she could keep her uniform on. She counts the ribs that are broken- one on the right and two on the left. The fractures are hairline, thankfully, despite the throbbing pain, so it looks like there’s no risk she’ll end up stabbing herself in the lung with her own bones. A few more ribs are badly bruised but that’s nothing she needs to worry about. Her left ankle is sprained and twisted slightly, and her right shoulder isn’t quite sitting in the socket where it should. Close, but not quite there. Long story short, everything seems to be slightly damaged to some extent. Everything hurts.

The only part of her that appears completely unharmed is her head. She reminds herself to give her thanks to the ancient alteans who designed the Paladin helmets once she’s back on the Castle. They sure didn’t do anything halfway when it came time to protect their pilot’s skulls.

Pidge starts thinking of her next course of action immediately. In her condition she doesn’t think she can handle climbing around inside her Lion to fix anything, so internal repairs will have to wait. And Green needs a serious sunbath if she’s ever going to fix any of her exterior damage, especially if she and Pidge want to be able to defend themselves before Allura shows up in the Castle on the off chance the pair run into anyone hostile in the meantime.

 _If_ she shows up.

 _When she shows up_.

First option: Fly her Lion all the way to Earth using only the front paw thrusters and crash land as carefully as possible, recharging and healing themselves on the only properly habitable planet, moon or asteroid in this _entire_ solar system and then immediately getting the hell out of dodge _hopefully_ before the Garrison or anyone they know shows up.

Second option: Fly until she’s around Earth distance away from the sun _but still very far away from the Earth itself_ and just wait in space until Green is all patched up. Nobody from Earth would have the ability to reach her by the time she was ready to run again.

She hates to admit it (no she doesn’t), but she likes option number two much better.

Green vetoes the idea immediately. When the human asks why, the Lion insists she needs medical care. _Proper_ medical care. And food, as there’s nothing to eat onboard the Lion. But mostly medical care. How much can she honestly handle herself?

Pidge responds with her usual stubbornness and tells the Lion to put the seat up. Green hesitates, but complies. Once the girl is upright again she puts one knee on the seat for leverage and swivels her waist until her right arm is firmly pressed against the back of the chair. Flashes of pain from her chest burn behind her eyes and in her lungs but she barrels through them all with her usual stubbornness.

Pidge takes a deep breath, grits her teeth, pushes her shoulder into the back of her seat as best she can manage, and _shoves_. The sharp _pop_ of the bone slipping back in the socket where it belongs sends a wave of nausea rolling down through her body into her stomach. If Lions could feel nausea she’s sure Green would have retched. She’s not totally sure how she _didn’t_. Green doesn’t openly question her Paladin about medical care again, though. The Lion seems quite happy to let the entire idea drop.

Pidge briefly wonders if alteans aren’t so durable. If they were anything like Allura they were certainly strong, but maybe that was in compensation for a more fragile interior.

The altean armor did seem to be freakishly sturdy in most places.

She breathes in, and then out, before she rests her swollen ankle on the opposite knee, her chair sliding forward into place at the helm. She reaches out with both hands to guide her Lion, blinking in surprise when Green takes over instead and starts flying them slowly in the trajectory Pidge had really, _really_ hoped she wouldn’t have to fly.

Back to Earth.

Pidge wants to fight her Lion on this. She wants to argue. She wants to bump heads with a giant metal cat whose eye is bigger than her whole body. She can already feel her contradictory attitude flaring up white-hot before she suddenly finds she doesn’t have the energy to try. Any energy she had earlier has already been spent. She sinks back into her seat as a strong, heavy wave of exhaustion rolls over her and quells her attitude. Green can feel it too and issues her Paladin a gentle command in a voice as clear as day, the first time she’s ever spoken in anything beyond ideas and feelings and impressions. Pidge foggily wonders if it’s a side effect of their connection.

 ** _Sleep_**.

Pidge’s argument dies on her tongue as she slips backwards toward unconsciousness. The surface of Kerberos fades from their shared sights as the Lion maneuvers herself toward the light of the familiar star nestled in the heart of the solar system. The teenager fades away, wrapped in the blanket of familiar constellations. Constellations she could pronounce before she could spell. Constellations she had been promised she would one day walk among.

Constellations she would dream of surpassing as a child.

Constellations she would dream of later, at night in the Castle of Lions, and wonder if she would ever see again.

Constellations she would come to wonder if her mother was watching, looking for her missing family in their distant patterns.

Constellations she wonders if her brother and father will ever see again.

She breathes steadily and lets her eyes slide shut.

Unconsciousness claims her.


	2. Divided We Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleep isn't always an easy thing.
> 
> Nightmares, memories... Who can tell the difference?
> 
> Who would want to?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's already read chapter one and bookmarked this and given kudos, I love you and I might have actually choked on my coffee this morning when I saw the number of views this already got. I definitely choked on my drink when I looked this evening.
> 
> Seriously, thank you all so much and I hope you all enjoy the direction I end up taking this story.

There’s screaming all around her, voices _she knows_ that she knows blending together into a horrifying wail that reverberates in her skull, the banshees of her past. Her head spins as she whips around, desperate to figure out where the sound, where the sounds are coming from. She can’t tell which way is up, where down is supposed to be. She can’t tell where the tiny space around her begins and ends. She can’t see anything. Everything looks the same in the darkness.

A hot, toxic bile bubbles in her throat and she stumbles, floating when she should be crashing. She can feel the emptiness swirling up and whipping around her like a hurricane.

There is no up or down. There is nothing at all here. There is only a void.

There is only her nightmare.

The screaming grows louder, more desperate, echoing in her ears and she can hear the voices growing more distinct with every agonizing heartbeat. Her whole body chills as the first wails become clear. Each horrifying cry for help is a pronged blade that jabs deep into her heart and twists violently with every syllable. Her throat burns, choking itself from the inside, strangling her with her own horror.

_‘I can’t see, I don’t- I can’t see any of you, guys where-’_

_‘Please say something I can’t be alone please say something anybody-’_

_‘I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you but if you can hear-’_

_‘Somethings wrong, I can’t- I can’t feel my-’_

_‘Respond, Paladins! I repeat, respond Paladins! Please I need-’_

_‘I can’t see anything I can’t see anything-’_

_‘Oh my god is this blood-’_

_‘Please, please, somebody, anybody, please, I can’t-’_

_‘Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? Don’t leave me-’_

_‘Paladins respond, I repeat, Paladins- kids, kids please, please say something-’_

_‘I need help guys, there’s blood everywhere there’s so much blood I can’t-’_

_‘I can’t be alone again- please somebody say something!’_

Pidge clutches her head in her hands with a desperate shriek as tears burn in thick tracks over her face, salty and boiling against her skin. Her fingers twist into her hair and yank- where did her helmet-? Her wailing turns downright feral in mindless attempt to drown out the voices as they ring and scream ever louder in her ears, begging her, pleading for her, desperate with fear and agony as they suffer, dy-

She doesn’t want to hear this-

She doesn’t want to hear-

She-

She-

_She doesn’t want to_ _remember_.

Flashes of faces, of _their_ faces, break up the darkness, filling the void in blinding flashes of color, monochrome echoes of forgotten visions. Nightmares.

_Memories_?

A face lit with flickering gold is smeared with blood that looks dark bronze under the light. Blood is everywhere inside the Lion. His skin is washed out, unnaturally pale. His dark eyes are wide in terror even as he continues to move and call out in almost stoic confidence, like the reality of his wounds, of his situation hasn’t set in yet.  There’s so much blood…

A face illuminated by blue is frantic, his out of focus gaze flickering erratically. His voice turns shrill in desperation. His hands tremble, his whole body trembles and vibrates and tears are brimming in his eyes as he scrambles for any lifeline in the darkness. The situation is too real, all too real, and he’s begging for it to be anything else.

A face bathed in red, in ominous, bloody red is deathly pale, his flesh ashen. His breathing is shallow, the pulse in his purple-bruised throat erratic and thin. His only movements come from his quiet, desperate pleas for help, for anyone to help as his hands grip the closest things to him in a lethal vice and claw deep, unnatural tracts into unyielding material.

A face visible under a quickly fading ultra-violet is utterly blank. The mind behind the storm cloud eyes is already somewhere else, somewhere even worse… His pleas have already long faded into terrifying silence. A thin sheen of sweat glimmers on his skin as the last light in his Lion flickers and disappears, leaving Pidge alone in darkness again.

Alone with her knowledge, her fears, her nightmares… _Her memories_?

There is only darkness. There is only _terror_ and there is only _darkness_.

The void whips and rips at her skin, burning, snarling, clawing, howling and drowning out the shrill sound of her desperate keening as it tries to shred her, to rend the flesh from her bones and rip away the very quintessence of her soul as _punishment_. There’s nothing left to protect her, no one left to fight for her. Her screaming doesn’t matter. Her pleading means nothing. She can’t fight back against the overwhelming emptiness of the void crashing down on her.

She’s alone.

**You could have prevented this.**

**You could have saved them.**

**They’ll die because of you**.

Pidge curls into herself as freezing numbness overtakes her senses. She can’t breathe, she can’t think. She can’t hear herself, she can’t feel herself. It’s too much, it’s all too much. She can’t- _she can’t_ …

**They’ll die because of you.**

**You were weak.**

**Stupid.**

**Naïve.**

**Useless.**

**Did you really think you belonged?**

**You’re a child.**

**You’re a failure.**

**They’ll die because of you.**

**They’ll all die because of you.**

Each thought tears into her like fangs, like claws, wounding her, maiming her, bleeding out every ounce of humanity she has in her veins with ruthless accuracy.

She can’t fight it.

She can’t…

 

A spark of green flashes behind her eyes. The hurricane of the void is suddenly drowned out by the softest of whispers.

**_They will not die._ **

Pidge whimpers as the soft, familiar warmth of the green spark grows and spreads, wrapping up and around her body in a gentle flame. The whirlwind of the void can’t touch her anymore, it can’t reach her through the light. The gentleness of the voice blocks out everything else. It tells her this is only a nightmare. None of this is real.

The nightmare is lying to her.

The void is wrong.

**_They will not die._ **

 

Another voice, voices, familiar and brave reverberate in her mind. They’re just as afraid as the others, just as broken as she feels, but there’s something in them, a promise of resilience. An unwillingness to be shattered, to give up again. They’ve lost too much to ever yield again. Voices blooming with hope.

‘ _We will find you. We will find you all_.’

‘ _Hang on, please, we’re coming. Just hold on a little while longer._ ’

‘ _We will find you, Paladins, I promise._ ’

Pidge lets out a shuddering breath as the gentle light envelopes her completely. She drifts, safe and secure.

They will not die.

They will not die.

This is only a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So shit went down, huh? That did not sound good.
> 
> I wonder what happened to the others...
> 
>  
> 
> In case it wasn’t super clear in context, the bolded text is meant to be Pidge’s internal dialogue, sort of. We’ve all had that shitty little voice in the back of our heads giving us hell when things go wrong, and unfortunately hers just happens to be a little loud right now. Can't really blame her though.
> 
> I plan to have the next chapter up by the 20th if all goes well. It's a bit long so I might have to cut it into halves.


	3. Impact Crater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge gets to Earth and finds that things have changed, not all for the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I check (and I try not to check too often) there are more views and kudos and I just want to reach through my laptop and hug everybody because holy shit there are people that enjoy my work what is this what is life right now?
> 
> It makes me really happy is the point I’m trying to make here.
> 
> Thank you and enjoy. I'm aiming to have the next chapter up before Sunday.

Pidge rouses almost on instinct when they reach the far side of the Earth’s moon. A jolt of something she vaguely recognizes as surprise flits through her connection with her Lion, telling her she’s caught Green off guard. Green’s deep purr fills the air as she fills her Paladin in.

As best she can tell their presence has already been detected by the Garrison and associated groups, so no matter where they land there will likely be someone there eventually to poke and prod at them while they recover. Also, her front paws alone are not enough to give her much in the way of control on the way down, so while she can decide on a general location of landing with a margin of error only a few miles wide there’s no promise of that crash landing being even the slightest bit smooth.

Pidge gnaws gently on her lower lip as she takes the information in, letting her eyes flick between the screens and the surface of the moon as she thinks. One hand roughly rubs away moisture on her cheeks she tries not to take notice of.

It was only a nightmare, nothing more. A ridiculous, horrible nightmare.

Not worth dwelling on.

She has more important things to think about.

The Lion prods, sensing her pilot is withholding something. Withholding many things. Pidge speaks for the first time since the wormhole and the rawness of her voice startles her. She wonders how much she had screamed in the wormhole to make it so. She must have. She remembers screaming.

She wonders if she screamed in her sleep.

She wonders how long she was out, after then and until now.

“Which side of the planet is facing the moon?” She winces at the gravel in her throat.

The display in front of her lights up. Her heart is torn between sinking and floating at the sight before deciding to just split the difference and just ice over instead. She closes herself off from her Lion deliberately and ignores the protests she makes as she loses herself in thought. Everything she had tried to keep from the forefront of her mind since that morning she first traveled through a wormhole rises and demands her attention.

She spent so much time over the past few months looking forward that she had never taken the time to look back. She had been too afraid to look back.

But now she has no choice. It’s all she _can_ do.

Where her mom is, it would be evening now.

She could see her again.

Apologize.

Cry.

Apologize some more, because if Pidge cries she _knows_ her mom is going to start crying too.

Apologize for apologizing. Maybe go into a nice little apology spiral.

Explain everything she’s learned, everything she’s done. Prove it if she has to.

Maybe even convince her mom to abandon Earth for the Castle of Lions, for the search to find the missing Holts. Join her in the unfamiliar expanse of space.

That last part would be almost frighteningly easy- her mother was an adventurous spirit, freakishly brave and disgustingly upbeat. She was the kind of woman who found skydiving to be a _soothing_ experience. Losing her family had broken her, even worse than it had broken Pidge, but it hadn’t completely extinguished her fires either. Pidge knew the warm embers were there underneath it all. All she needed was a little fuel and she’d be back just as ferocious as before.

But, _big, very big but_ , doing so would tack another several hours onto the risky terrestrial layover Pidge and Green had already resigned themselves to. Pidge needed food, she couldn’t say she didn’t, and her Lion needed sunlight. They’d have to wait until morning to recharge, and there was no promise of clear, sunny weather, though the odds were decent enough, and it would make getting caught and pinned down ever more likely.

The Green Lion’s gentle rumble mutates into an impatient snarl that reverberates and echoes in the metal cabin and Pidge apologizes as she snaps back to attention.

“Green,” she says, trying to keep her emotions out of the way and stuffing them into a little box. She doesn’t want to compromise her Lion’s choice. They need to be thinking rationally. “Where do you want to land?”

The image of the empty stretch of area just outside Pidge’s town, not her hometown, and dangerously close to the Garrison territory, flashes on the screen. She pulled it from her Paladin’s mind the moment they reconnected. Pidge isn’t totally sure if she’s more impressed or bothered by the action. She clears her throat in a failed attempt to make her voice feel a little less ugly.

“I said what do _you_ want, not what do I want.”

The image of the house her family moved into a few years back to keep them close to the new Garrison facility flashes on the screens and Pidge growls low in her throat, this time directing it _at_ her Lion and openly implying just as much. The Lion growls back unfazed.

“You do realize the odds of us getting caught will change from ‘odds’ to ‘virtual guarantee’ if we go there, don’t you? You do realize they’ll probably shoot at us on the way out- they have rockets, Green, big ones, do you know that? They’ll try to _blast us out of the sky_.”

The cat only scoffs, citing her heavy armor and lightning speed, the concept of ‘ ** _try_** ’ hummed out in a playfully mocking tone. She may not be as tough as the Yellow Lion or as fast as the Red Lion, sure, but the pair of them will be more than fine against such primitive weapons. Pidge almost has half a mind to be insulted at that comment. _Primitive_. The Lion only purrs.

**_Besides…_ **

The image the giant alien mech cat drags up isn’t displayed on the screens this time, but it’s so clear in Pidge’s head it may as well be. Guilt and shame and anger and a thousand other emotions boil just under her surface at the crystal clear, _razor sharp_ memory of her heartbroken mother the morning after the Kerberos announcement. Pidge hadn’t slept- she had started planning her first Garrison break-in that same night in a fury-fueled panic.

The early morning light had bathed the kitchen in an eerie orange glow that gave the sleep-deprived teenager pause in the doorway. Her mother was upright, but only barely. Her cell phone vibrated violently, threatening to fall from the table, though the older Holt made no move to answer it. It rang over and over again with what Pidge knew was the same steady tone but what had felt like an ever growing persistence. Something akin to desperation.

Pidge never did ask who had called that morning.

Her mother sat at the table, facing the morning sun, her eyes puffy and red.  The skin under her eyes was dark with tender bruises from her fight with her own exhaustion. She hadn’t slept. It would be a long time before she slept again. It would be longer still until she slept well. The full cup of coffee in her hands was ice cold and the container of creamer beside it that she hadn’t bothered to use or put away was already room temperature. She didn’t notice her daughter come in, not even when the girl stood in front of her. She had gone numb. She didn’t _see_ anything.

Anything except the heartbreak of learning she had just lost two of the most precious people in her life.

And on the _evening news_. There hadn’t even been a warning… She had been blindsided.

Pidge came from a small family. Downright tiny, by Lance’s standards. Her parents were only children, born to only children. She didn’t know of any cousins or other living relatives on either side of her family. Her father’s parents had died years before she was born, though her brother had a number of memories about them, and she only had the haziest recollections of her mother’s parents who themselves had died roughly a year apart when she was still young. For as long as she could remember it had just been her parents, her brother, and her.

When they had moved from their Massachusetts hometown and across the country to live in one of the small cities outside the new Galaxy Garrison location everyone had said goodbye to their old lives and their old friends. Her mother, for all her fire, had had a particularly hard time building new friendships in their new town, even harder than she did, so while she got along well enough with some of their neighbors she didn’t have many people in her life outside of her family and some of the people she occasionally kept up with back home. She had never said as much, but that sacrifice had been a lonely one.

Pidge wonders if her mother would have moved back to the northeast after Pidge’s disappearance. Without the last of her family she would have had nothing keeping her out in the Arizona deserts anymore.

She wonders if her disappearance shattered her mother.

She wonders, darkly, if her mother is even still alive. After everything she’s been through…

No.

_No_.

Maybe it revitalized her. Maybe it was her fuel. Maybe losing her daughter had been the last straw. Maybe she had ripped into Iverson and all his superiors in ways Pidge had only dreamed about, furious and seething, her unimposing little silhouette striking fear into the hearts of men three times her size and her wrath burning through them with a fire so intense Keith might have to make room for a second Red Paladin.

Green interrupts Pidge’s train of thought gently, the feel of her mind-voice soothing over the human like a much needed hot shower. **_Paladin- no, only one at a time. Apprentice, however- maybe. Ask Red someday_**. Pidge takes that little bit of knowledge into consideration with a tired grin.

It’s strange to hear her Lion speak so clearly though.

“Home it is, then?”

Green purrs in the affirmative. Pidge knows she doesn’t need to speak out loud- her thoughts are enough, her emotions, her impulses are all enough, but the sound of her voice echoing in her ears helps to ground her. It helps to drown out the last distant echoes of her nightmare.

It helps keep her sane.

“Then make it so.”

 

The landing was… unpleasant, to say the least.

Turns out Green did have seatbelts, damn good ones too, she just hadn’t had the chance to mention them to her Paladin before being flung bodily from the wormhole. She hadn’t exactly needed them until then.

Would have been nice to know about ahead of time, but whatever. Ribs heal.

Pidge stretches her arms out above her head and cracks her neck with a slow roll to loosen it. Green just barely managed to land them so they were upright, her claws digging deep tracks into the hard, dry earth as she slid on her belly into the desert, knocking over and utterly destroying the unfortunate cacti and other scrub plants in her path. It was graceless, more akin to a housecat accidentally slipping from a kitchen counter than a magical alien robot ship coming in for a purposeful landing, but it _worked_.

Any crash you can walk away from, and all that.

Pidge unbuckles and rises to her feet, immediately crashing face first into the control panels of her Lion when her bad ankle gives out beneath her. Again she is grateful for her helmet, even as her ribs burn and throb and the air she just lost refuses to reenter her lungs.

Green gently encourages her to use her bayard. Pidge, struggling through the violent spinning in her head, decides not to question it.

It manifests in her hand at her call from its storage on her thigh, flashing bright in the dim light as it takes a new form.

“What the shit?”

**_Language_**.

“Don’t tell me you’re filling in for Shiro now,” Pidge croons hoarsely at her Lion the moment she catches her breath. “I don’t think I need _another_ space dad.”

The Lion grumbles good-naturedly.

The bayard in the Paladin’s hand is now unmistakably a spear, the slender blade at the far end of it glowing with the threat of an electric shock to anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of Pidge’s wrath. It’s unfamiliar; she’s become very comfortable with her short grappling hook sort of blade, but the weight of the spear in her hand and the distance it can give her in a close-quarters fight is something she will definitely learn to use. She uses it like a walking stick to keep the weight off her left leg as much as she can when she stands back up.

**_Takes time to master_** , her Lion explains. **_Weapon can suit situation, or change at will. Yours flexible before, didn’t need to adapt until now_.**

“How close are we?”

She doesn’t need to elaborate on the ‘to where’. The Lion knows what she means.

**_Ignoring leg, perhaps two and half hours from house? Given leg, unsure. Tried to get only close as was safe_**.

“And what about the Garrison?”

They used the cloaking technology Pidge borrowed from the invisible maze the moment they rounded the moon, using it in tandem with a massive burst of interference that came from a failed attempt at using the particle barrier, hopefully hiding the Lion from proper detection during their decent into the planet’s atmosphere. They didn’t know for sure how well it would work, or if it would camouflage their trajectory, but they had hoped. It looked solid enough in theory.

**_Don’t seem to know path. Don’t seem to know crater. Will warn if changes_**.

She probably wouldn’t have chosen the word ‘crater’ to describe their landing zone, but it certainly fits.

Pidge double-checks to make sure the Garrison radio signals are the same as when she left, (really you’d think they’d change their shit every once in a while she’d only been caught hacking into their stuff how many times), only moving to leave once she’s positive the Lion will be able to hear them coming.

She pauses.

Right. The jaw is locked. Busted hinge. She can’t get out that way if she tried. And the exit in the chest is the only other-

The chest.

Goddamn it _the chest_.

“ _Greeeeen_ ,” Pidge groans, tone shaking and raspy, just as the Lion rumbles in shared frustration, having just come to the exact same embarrassing conclusion. They promise in tandem to never speak of such an egregious slip of their otherwise brilliant minds ever again. Especially not to the Blue Lion or her Paladin. _They would never hear the end of it_.

“Would you please,” Pidge hums, bracing herself in anticipation. The Lion slowly brings her front half up from the dry earth into an awkward crouching position as she already understands the unspoken half of the question.

“Thank you, girl.”

The Paladin limps the distance to the center of her Lion and slips herself onto the seat of her speeder where it unfolds up from the floor before deactivating her bayard. She counts her lucky stars the speeder is unscathed given how brutal a beating Green’s entire chest seemed to take.

“I should be back- wait, if somebody comes how will you warn me?”

**_Minds deeply connected now. Strong bond. Could reach you from distance here to planet moon, easy_**.

It takes her a second before she grins. “Awesome.”

Pidge purses her lips before giving the Lion the signal to drop her. The landing is rough, it makes her ribs ache and her head spin, but the hovering machine is already roaring underneath her fingers and she only has to egg it on a touch before it shoots off across the barren landscape faster than she’s ever flown it before. The wind whips the little tufts of hair sticking out from underneath her helmet wildly, her heart is racing underneath her breast, and she can’t help but enjoy the sharp chill of the air as it stings the exposed part of her face and smells unmistakably like the only atmosphere she had ever known until a few short months ago.

She’s back on Earth.

She’s home.

She’s actually _home_.

It’s only after finally getting back she realizes she honestly didn’t think she would ever see it again. She had hoped, sure, but that wasn’t quite the same as believing.

She’s fighting on the front lines of an interstellar rebellion ten thousand years in the making- surviving long enough to see each new fight through was really her biggest priority, even if she didn’t ever want to admit it out loud.

Her stomach aches as she races across the desert, empty since who knows when and knotted up around itself in bitter hunger.

She leans forward and holds her breath, ignoring the throbbing pain, ignoring the hunger, ignoring her anxieties and her nagging thoughts and her itching concerns, pushing the speeder even faster, even harder, pushing it toward its limits as she flies over the barren landscape, riding with only the quietly glimmering constellations for company.

She’s almost home.

She’s almost home.

She’s _home_.

 

Pidge doesn’t know how in ten thousand alien hells her stars aligned the way they did but she has absolutely no complaints to issue to the cosmic forces-that-be right now. She limps the speeder behind the shed in the backyard where the neighbors won’t be able to see it as she takes her good luck in. She reminds herself to thank her parents for buying the lot way on the edge of town after this. Sure, it had been with the intention of stargazing on the weekends, they were all astronomy nerds after all, but benefits were benefits.

She can see through the light in the kitchen window her mother is home, quite likely at the stove given her position, or maybe at the coffeemaker. She knows that blonde pixie cut anywhere. She immediately wonders what her mom made for dinner before shaking her head in wry guilt. _Priorities_.

Her mom is home. She hasn’t left town. That’s part one.

Now Pidge just needs to figure out how to announce her return without giving her mother a heart attack, thus proving she is in fact still alive. That’s part two.

She’s not sure part two will be easy.

**_Just go. You’re her cub. She wants to see you_**.

“Shit, Green-” Pidge hisses as she jolts, clutching at her chest in panic as she glares at nothing- “how about you _warn a bitch_ next time.”

The Lion simply laughs in the back of her Paladin’s brain. Smug giant alien robot cat.

**_Apologies, cub. Now go_**.

“But what if-”

**_GO_.**

_Pushy_ giant alien robot cat.

Pidge wills her bayard to life, leaning on the length of the spear to keep her weight off her ankle. It’s a short walk to the house from the shed, but with her limp it takes a bit longer than she’s used to. A strange man appears in the kitchen behind the blonde head of hair and says something. Pidge can’t figure out from where she is what it is, she can’t read his lips at this distance even with her helmet, but when her mother turns around she realizes it doesn’t matter.

She freezes mid-limp.

That is not her mother. The woman in that kitchen is not her mother.

Oh no, no no no no _no no nonononono that is not her mother where is her mother what is_ -

Fuck.

She backpedals onto her bad ankle _hard_ and nearly falls over completely before sprinting back to her speeder, her heart pounding in her ears. The adrenaline coursing out into her body is enough to smother the pain in her ankle as she clambers back on to her transport, though it’s not enough to dull the fear overwhelming her rational thought as she flies back out into the desert. She doesn’t know if they saw her, they probably at least saw the light of her bayard in the night, she hadn’t thought to dim it, oh shit oh shit this is bad this is not what she had prepared for at all-

**_Cub_.**

She can feel herself panicking, she knows she’s panicking but she can’t stop, her body is trembling, she’s breathing so hard she’s panting and she can barely see straight, her eyes are burning-

**_CUB_.**

Pidge can’t stop the tears in her eyes from falling as she opens herself to her Lion’s stern voice. She wants to be angry at her own panic, bitter at her own irrationality, but the softness of her Lion stays her frustration.

**_Calm yourself. Breathe, cub. You need to breathe_.**

She draws a shaking breath that stings like knives in her chest as she slows her speeder. She needs to focus.

**_Priorities, cub. Think. Use brain I picked you for. Your mother is not here. We know this now. What next_?**

Pidge waits until the machine underneath her stops completely before slamming her head against the front handles in frustration. Her ankle throbs violently, pain racking up her leg and through her body, the twisting and snarling of her empty stomach not far behind. Green issues her commands with a gut-wrenchingly gentle tone that draws out more frustrated tears from her Paladin. If she weren’t in the state she was in she’d be horrified at her own crying.

**_Feed yourself. Attend your hurts. I will wait_.**

Pidge sniffles through gritted teeth, tears burning hot tracks down her skin, wanting desperately to argue but nodding anyway. Green is right. She needs to lick her wounds, fill her stomach and regroup.  She needs to stay in control of her situation. She can’t let go of the last tendrils of her sanity yet- too much is at stake. She’s a Defender of the Universe for fucks sake.

She’s a _Defender of the Universe_. She’s a Paladin and an Arm of Voltron.

And she’s all alone.

Completely, undeniably alone.

A tiny part of her twists with pain, low in her stomach as a strange thought flashes to mind- lions aren’t meant to be alone.

 

It’s only after realizing she has quite literally nowhere to go that Pidge decides her only option left involves petty theft. She has no friends, nobody she can fall back on here. Hunk and Lance didn’t have anyone who lived in this state, so she can’t even try that. She doesn’t know if Keith knew anyone- if he did he certainly never mentioned them. Pidge has no real history here without her family. Just the Garrison, and they’ll never let her leave if she goes through their doors again. She was there when they found Shiro. She remembers.

She knows.

They would never have let him go.

Had she and the boys not been there that night, had things not happened the way they did, it’s safe to say nobody would have ever known he had even survived Kerberos.

He would never have breathed another free breath.

She shakes her head violently, focusing on the task at hand. She can brood later. Now is not the time for brooding. She needs to focus on her current priority.

Robbing a careless teenager or group of teenagers of their hard-earned money.

**_Calm, cub. Lower. Don’t want to be seen_**.

And with the Green Lion, the Spirit of, among other various things, Stealth and Deception guiding her, she’ll be fine.

Probably.

She wonders if Keith would be better at this. He seems like he would be. This seems like the kind of thing he’s done before. He had to survive alone in the desert around here somehow. She’ll have to ask him the next time she sees him.

She ducks down further behind the car at the end of the lot, careful not to touch it _just in case_ and shifting her weight between her left knee and her good foot as she watches the teenagers filtering in and out of the huge arcade. It’s the only place she and her brother had ever really gone in town that wasn’t the grocery store or the Garrison, and the only place she can think of that would have what she needs at this hour anyway. She and Matt had both had a nasty propensity for pirating movies and wearing clothes until they were threadbare, so they hadn’t even gone to the mall unless it was with their mother to pick something up.  Games were their only motivation for leaving the house otherwise. She’s lucky she caught them on a weekend night- she assumes it’s a Friday or a Saturday given the volume of teenagers at this unholy hour.

A blue pickup truck pulls in to an empty space nearby, passenger side facing her, and she pulls a sharp breath in through her teeth as she crawls a few feet back into the bushes. She has a good feeling about this one. Green purrs encouragingly.

Five teenage boys pile out of the vehicle, voices loud as they chatter about who gives a damn what new game they’re here to play and their plans for a sleepover tonight and- _oh, would you look at that_ \- they just threw all their backpacks in the back of the truck.

Bingo, bitch.

And, even better, one of them looks to be about her size. If she’s lucky they’ll have clothes they planned to wear tomorrow in her size. If she’s even luckier it won’t be something completely hideous, though at this point she’d wear almost anything she can get her hands on. The thin layer of sweat stuck between her skin and the protective black material of her suit makes her feel absolutely filthy.

Her muscles burn as she waits, twitching in anticipation and carefully counting out the minutes down until she is absolutely sure they won’t catch her in the act on the off chance they returned for something, before she finally slinks over to the truck. She almost feels bad about robbing them.

Almost. She _is_ still pretty desperate.

She’s sorry, not hopeless.

Ten minutes later and Pidge is a full four hundred dollars richer than she was when she landed on Earth earlier in the night. She makes sure to leave her unfortunate victims more than enough for gas money and a quickly scrawled ‘sorry’ with a marker on a piece of paper she tore out of one of their notebooks. She’s not a total monster.

All the clothes were only nightclothes, so she leaves them with only some hesitation. She does slip a very nice laptop out of one of the bags though, the one she noticed was without a built in camera. After that incident with Matt’s automatic camera setup she learned to be extra cautious with unfamiliar computers. Not to keep, of course, just to borrow really quickly. She knows it’d be an incredibly easy way to track her down if she hung on to it.

It would also bump her up from petty to grand theft.

Plus, it’s just damn _rude_. The kid probably has a ton of homework on it. She knows she’d be furious if it were her computer someone got light-fingered with.

Another minute and a serious memory wipe of the search history later and she has what she needs.

Pidge slips the laptop back into the bag and carefully limps back to where she hid her speeder in the bushes. On to her next stop, thankfully now devoid of more law breaking. She knows she had to do it, but that doesn’t exactly make it more palatable.

It’s just a good thing Shiro isn’t here to lecture her right now.

 

The cashier doesn’t even give the armored up kid with a bad limp a second glance before turning back to whatever music he was listening to in his neon orange headphones and nodding along. Pidge sees no reason to complain, though it does still concern her greatly. You’d think her appearance would at least raise a few red flags. Instead, she just grabs a shopping basket and tries not to act too suspicious. At least the place is empty at this hour.

She completes her shopping as quickly as she can, grabbing a cheap backpack, sneakers, two pairs of jeans, three shirts, socks, underwear, and a light jacket in the span of maybe a minute while quietly thanking whatever brilliant soul came up with the concept of convenience stores because _damn is this shit convenient_. Green chuckles in the back of her mind at the thought as Pidge moves through the store with all the focus she reserves for her more serious missions. She wants to be over-prepared for her layover. Matt always said she was just a few knocks around the head away from going full doomsday prepper. She always liked to joke that she saw no problem with that, and that maybe he could instead learn to plan a bit better. ‘Winging it’ is for your eyeliner, not your future.

Toothbrush, hairbrush, sunscreen, nail clippers.

Tampons, dry shampoo, deodorant, sunglasses, cute wallet with a cat on it.

Cold gel packs, ankle brace, five bottles of over the counter painkillers…

_Six_ bottles of over the counter painkillers.

A disgusting amount of jerky and trail mix.

A huge water bottle and a small soda.

A peanut butter cup because she’d sooner die than let anyone take that little luxury away from her. She knows in her bones she’d fistfight a man right now if this was the only one in the store, and she has no shame.

An apple because she hasn’t had one in _forever_ \- there’s no fresh fruit in space she trusts enough to eat raw, not after that last time. She’ll let the guys make that gamble. A plate of food goo, nasty as it is, at least won’t make her sick.

And some fruity breath mints. She knows she needs them. She goes a bit overboard but ultimately sticks to her original list. The only thing she couldn’t find was a proper bra, but the sports bra she’s been using since she went away to the Garrison will manage for now even if it has grown pretty loose in the band with all the wear it’s sustained lately. The benefits of being so small chested.

The cashier hardly seems to even register her presence as he rings up her items, tapping his foot to a beat she can’t hear behind the counter as he works. She glances at the television behind him to check the time as he finishes and blinks in surprise.

Ah, fucking hell.

Good thing she kept her helmet on, then. Good thing it’s still on, in fact.

She forgot how quickly news, even the fairly petty kind, traveled around here.

A surprisingly sharp cell phone photo of her given the distance it was taken shows her in the back of that pickup outside the arcade. Thankfully it doesn’t show her face, the glare of the laptop in her lap obscures what little could be seen through her helmet, but given the way she’s dressed it hardly matters right now. She doesn’t bother reading the closed captions. She can’t wait. She needs to _go_. Pidge quietly pays the man the nearly three hundred dollar sum without batting an eye before stuffing her shopping bags in her new backpack and limping out the door as nonchalantly as she can manage.

As she speeds off she gets the sinking feeling she heard someone shouting after her.

 

She’s been back on Earth all of maybe four hours and in that time she’s robbed a group of innocent teenagers, got in major trouble for robbing said teenagers, and run from the law, only escaping at all because she pulled incredibly reckless stunts on her speeder that would easily put her actions on par with the shit the Red Paladin put her and everyone else through the night they saved Shiro.

Keith would probably be proud. Lance would probably be freaking out. Shiro would probably be both terrified but also in Concerned Dad Mode, even if he refused to call it that.

And Hunk would probably be on his third admittedly _completely justified_ anxiety attack by now. And he’d have probably thrown up at least twice- Pidge is more than willing to cop to the fact that she’s a _terrifying driver_.

She tears up thinking about her friends as she guides her speeder back in to her Lion, finally back in safe territory as it’s pulled up into the security of the metal chest of the cat. Pidge flops back down in her chair as carefully as she can, aware of the pain in her ribs as it flares up again. She swallows a small handful of painkillers before immediately starting in on the dry jerky, only the patient rumbling of her Lion to go slowly keeping her from just inhaling her food outright like a starved animal. Her mind wanders as she eats.

She misses her friends. She misses their jokes and their company and their weird annoying quirks.

She misses the suffocating bear hugs and the soft hair ruffles, the traded quips and banter, the casual sparring, the pillow fights, the nights they spent stargazing out the windows, the understanding forged in shared experiences.

She misses the weird new life she had just started carving out for herself in the midst of all this chaos.

She misses how filling the altean food goo was.

That little revelation hits her like a brick to the face. It may have desperately needed a thousand seasonings, but it kept her pleasantly full and in fighting shape. It had quickly become a familiar constant in the wild ride that her life had turned into. That she misses it is just such a strange thought.

**_Eat, cub. You need your strength_**.

“Thanks, Green.” Pidge doesn’t hide the tired sniffle in her voice. She can feel the sadness in her Lion, too, she knows she’s not the only one missing the life she had just been brutally ripped away from. After ten thousand years she was finally back among her fellow Lions, among the remnants of her birth civilization, fighting again for justice and freedom. She was ancient, and will likely grow far older, but every moment mattered to her all the same. Once Pidge’s full on jerky and apple she goes through her spoils, ripping off the tags and throwing the unnecessary bags and boxes in a corner. She puts the last of her illegally acquired cash in her new wallet and carefully puts her new things away in her backpack.

Her Lion quietly urges her to get some sleep. Morning will come in a few hours, and once she’s recharged they can take to the air again. They’ll figure out what to do next after that.

Pidge doesn’t mention what she learned back at the arcade, what she plans to do. She’s not totally sure that Green is aware of it, and she’s not sure the Green Lion would approve.

Pidge checked her mother’s social media.

She moved back to their hometown a few weeks after the Garrison told her that her daughter was gone (dead).

Pidge didn’t get a new address, didn’t have the time, but she figured she wouldn’t need it. She knows her mother’s habits well enough that she probably wouldn’t have to show up on her front door step.

Though it might be the better option if her mother believed the Garrison’s lies.

She closes her eyes and reclines back in her chair, the constellations in the night sky familiar and strange all at once- had it really been so recently she had left it all behind? The shape of Orion, of Taurus, of Cygnus and Andromeda in the sky were sights she once knew like the back of her hand, but here and now they look almost alien. Like she’s been sleeping too many nights under foreign skies, beneath foreign stars to feel at home under their light anymore. She shakes her head and wills it to clear.

She just needs to rest.

Sleep on it.

She’ll figure it out tomorrow.

It will all work out tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this I couldn’t remember what the Paladin speeders looked like and couldn’t find any screenshots for references, so I went off of what I remembered. 
> 
> Unfortunately I remembered wrong and thought they looked a bit more like the ones used in Star Wars for the Endor forest chase scene, and wrote them as such. They are not in fact actually open to the elements like a motorcycle. Sadly. Motorcycles are awesome.
> 
> But I’m going to ignore that for the sake of story because by the time I realized what the speeders looked like I had already written well past this so I’m going to ask you to ignore this little inconsistency.
> 
> My bad.
> 
> Also, I don’t know if it’s like this in other places in the US (especially inland) but at a lot of the convenience stores around here, especially the ones by the beach, they have a section full of cheap clothes and shoes. It’s nice when you remember you forgot to get sunscreen and you find a cute hat or skirt or something while you’re out.
> 
> Interesting note: Back when I was struggling with the direction of this fic a month ago I flipped a coin to decide if Pidge’s mom had moved away or not. In hindsight that decision made this fic wayyy longer than if she had stayed in the same house, and I could have gotten our girl back on the Castle sooner, but it’s a bit late to look back on that now. I’m not happy with all the decisions I’ve made since then but I am sticking to them because damnit I am stubborn.


	4. Terra Firma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the little things that get you. It's the little things that snowball.
> 
> For better or for worse, it's the little things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a little tipsy and full of feelings over the new The Walking Dead episode, so here's a new chapter. It's fairly short compared to some of the chapters coming up next, and I am hoping to have the next one up by Saturday night.

She can’t sleep.

Couldn’t sleep.

Can’t sleep.

She tries desperately to sleep, she tries every single trick she’s ever read about and every technique Shiro ever taught her but she just can’t find it in her to rest. Her brain just won’t _shut the hell up_. Everything hurts too much, and her head is spinning with ideas.

Admittedly it’s nothing new, her brain is always going off on some tangent, but _fuck_ is it annoying right now.

Faint streaks of pink and orange bloom over the rocky horizon, the last light of the stars twinkling and fading in the coming daylight, and Pidge rouses in frustration as she realizes she spent the last few precious hours she could have done _anything else_ doing nothing but stewing. She runs her hands through her hair slowly and rubs at her eyes.

**_Hungry_?**

It’s still weird to hear the Green Lion talk.

Like, really, _really_ weird.

She’s used to bursts of images and feelings, flashes of data. Long moments growing longer with every bond that let her feel her Lion as if it were herself. But hearing Green now...

This is just… intimate.

“No,” she replies. Her stomach almost immediately proves her wrong with a frighteningly good impression of a whale call. She sighs and pinches her nose between her thumb and index finger, trying desperately not to roll her eyes.

**_Go find food. Filling food. You will need_.**

“What about you?”

**_If in danger, I will warn you. Until then, I charge. I heal. I need no company during_.**

Pidge nods, stripping herself out of her armor slowly. Her bruises are even worse than she had expected, blotchy and dark purple over huge swaths of her body. Large patches of her skin are so darkly mottled with settled blood that she can’t find the patterns of freckles she knows should be there. Jeans and one of the plain shirts she picked out don’t cover nearly enough alone, so she throws the forest green windbreaker over her arms with a sigh. Hopefully nobody will notice the dark marks on the backs of her hands, or around the base of her neck. Hopefully nobody will notice her at all.

Pidge stuffs her armor and her inactive bayard in the bottom of her bag, not questioning how it all manages to fit. She knows it shouldn’t, not with everything else in there. Best not to ask out loud though. Might break the spell of the weird science-magic. She’s sure Coran can explain it all in full when she gets back to the Castle anyway. Allura would probably explain it quicker, though, and use fewer untranslatable Altean words she doesn’t know yet.

Green’s metal slowly starts to warm with a purr as the sun rises over the horizon, bright and hot. The Lion should have enough energy to repair herself fully come sunset as long as the skies stay clear.

And given that this is still the deserts of Arizona, that’s a safe assumption.

“Don’t run off anywhere now, Green,” Pidge teases as she settles back on her speeder, grinning when the Lion responds with the telepathic version of pouting and sticking her tongue out. “There’s a little diner on the edge of town that should be open by now, I’ll be back soon.”

Her drop is smoother this time, and she decides to take her ride just a touch slower than last time as the golden sun blazes familiarly against her back. Even as everything aches under the admittedly unhealthy amount of painkillers she’s been chugging, she can’t help but feel a warm spark of contentment settle in her chest. She figures she can savor the moment.

She won’t be here long anyway.

 

Nobody at the diner pays her a second glance, except maybe the waitress who was clearly not sure someone as small as Pidge could eat everything she had ordered, and it’s nice. Part of her had been terrified her limp would give her away as the mysterious figure on the little tv in the background, but none of the half-dozen people here seems to have made that connection. Instead she’s faded completely into the scenery, transparent, just another face in the crowd as far as the rest of this world is concerned.

She blows bubbles into her water and hums quietly as she waits for the bill when a sudden wave of cold terror washes over her.

**_I have been found_**.

She sucks in a mouthful of water and doubles over in a coughing fit as it burns in her lungs. She snarls out a panicked curse the moment she catches her breath and starts rummaging in her pocket for her wallet as the waitress makes her way back to the table.

“How much?” she coughs out, her voice strangled and low. She knows she looks ready to run. She can’t help it. She just hopes the woman doesn’t try to stop her.

“About forty bucks,” the woman replies. Concern is etched into her face as she hands the teenager the bill. Pidge just throws down what she’s pretty sure are five tens on the table and grabs her bag, making for the door as quickly as she can and limping as little as she can manage. The brace she put on this morning helps, but only so much. It would be easier with her spear.

“Keep the change,” she calls as she leaves, her gut icing over as she makes her way back to where she parked her speeder behind the diner. Green’s panic fades from her mind and she demands the Lion not cut her off, promising she’ll be there as soon as she can.

Green tells her not to. It’s too late, and people have already surrounded her.

Pidge lets her Lion know that the Garrison can fucking shove it because she’s on her way back right the hell now. She tells Green to throw up the particle barrier to keep them off, and be ready to catch her because she’ll be coming in hot. Her heart is racing as she takes off across the desert, pulse thrumming and already gearing up for a fight. She ignores the dizziness in her head as her lungs burn, unable to take in nearly enough oxygen as she demands under the aching in her ribs.

**_Can’t_.**

“What the hell do you mean you can’t?” Pidge swears, coughing more than speaking as her speeder kicks up dust and sand into her face. Her Lion hears her all the same.

**_Barrier crystal still out of alignment. Can’t realign on my own_.**

“Fuck!”

**_Sorry_.**

“No don’t you dare apologize, Green,” Pidge panics, swerving around a frightened coyote that shrieks as she races past toward the crash site. Her voice trembles with something in the space between horror and rage and she can’t stop her words from coming. “Don’t you dare apologize girl, I should have fixed that before I left you. Green, it’s my fault, this is my fault. I forgot. This is my fault. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

**_STOP_.**

The speeder comes to a stop so sudden Pidge nearly flies ass over head over the front end of it. She hiccups, panting as her muscles burn in tension. Her head refuses to stop spinning and even though she knows she’s upright she feels like she’s tilting far over the edge. Pidge valiantly tries to pretend it’s just the sun in her eyes as she wipes her thumb across her cheeks after the frustration she can’t restrain.

**_Listen_.**

Pidge’s ears pick up the frighteningly familiar sounds of Garrison vehicles swarming the area just beyond the crest she was about to climb, filling the valley air with a noise like a swarm of hornets as they descend on her weakened Lion. Her stomach sinks and she closes her eyes, hoping it’s maybe not that bad. What she sees through her Lion’s eyes is somehow worse than she had expected.

Green is pinned on her side, something is holding her down, and she’s surrounded by more vehicles and people than she can see. After what happened with Shiro it looks like they’re not taking any chances with manpower. Pidge spots Iverson’s familiar mug near her Lion’s face and her hackles raise as she snarls, surprised when the sound echoes out of both her own and of her Lion’s mouth. Green certainly hadn’t intended to growl at the man. At least, not at that moment. _Maybe later_. She knew how her Paladin felt about him. The people in front of the Lion panic and stumble backwards at the sound, shouting something indistinct into their radios.

**_Run_.**

“What about you?”

**_I will keep in contact with you, cub_** , the Lion soothes, her voice rumbling down in her Paladin’s bones. **_Can do that much. Need you to run now, before they notice. I see weapons_.**

“I’ll break you out, Green,” Pidge murmurs as she rounds the speeder. Her body is shaking, fear and fury boiling in her blood. She tries her best to block out the fear- the fury, however, she embraces. “I promise I’ll get you out of there.”

**_I know you will_.**

“I’m sorry.”

**_No apologies. Find mother. Show her you still live. That is most important. Come up with plan later._ **

Pidge lets out a bitter laugh as she leans forward, willing the speeder in the opposite direction every instinct is telling her to fly. Of course her Lion already knew about her plan. Of course she knew.

She doesn’t know how her mom can help, but at this point she knows it’s her only option. She needs to _plan_. She’s in no condition to charge in, bayard ablaze. Not yet.

She’s badly injured, lightheaded, she has no mobility on her feet; Green is in no state to fight either, she can’t run, won’t be able to run for a day at least, they have too many guns- it would all be messy _at best_. There’s no guarantee they would even need Pidge alive.

She’s sure she’ll think of something better.

Somehow.

She’s a Paladin of Voltron. Surely she can come up with _something_.

 

It’s not until she slips into a rest stop around noon that Pidge realizes she left her peanut butter cup in her Lion.

“ _MOTHERFUCKER!_ ”

The curse scares the shit out of the stranger in the stall next to her. Literally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve all had days where we just fuck up for no reason and the important stuff slips our minds. Unfortunately for Pidge it’s one of those mornings, and it’s not something she can just shrug off this time.
> 
> I almost feel bad about the hell I’m gonna be putting her through but then I remember this is actually pretty par for the course whenever I really like a character, so at least it’s not, like, a new thing.
> 
> I’m not going to tag it but most of the characters Pidge is going to be interacting with during her layover on Earth are essentially OC’s. Including her mom, honestly, because we know even less about that woman than Pidge’s brother and father, and we know next to nothing about them.
> 
> And Pidge’s mom has been really fun to create since basically everything about her is open to interpretation so hopefully where I go with that will be fun for everyone else too.


	5. In Plain Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More often than not, the answers to our questions are in plain sight.
> 
> And sometimes we have the answers before we even have the questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is giving me a lot of trouble so I'm not sure when it'll be up; I've got a number of issues with some things that happen in it and I'm trying to look at it with fresh eyes to figure it out.
> 
> Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy this update.

Her nights are filled with visions of the things her Lion sees. Between that and the fact she never has much more than a hundred dollars in cash on her person at any given time, stealing from unattended wallets and purses when she runs low, she’s forced to her to take her rest outside.  Whatever sleep she manages to catch is uneasy, to say the least.

At least there are no nightmares.

She struggles to sleep at all, and in such short bursts there’s no room for dreaming, but at least there are no nightmares. As awful as sleeping outside is she knows she has to.

That’s her excuse, anyway. She’s terrified of leaving her speeder unattended while she sleeps. Nobody could drive it away- as a part of her Lion it only responds to her touch- but they still could pack it up in a truck or a trailer when she’s not looking and then she’ll have to find a whole other way to get around. She’s not sure she’d be that good at hotwiring people’s cars. Or driving them.

In principle she could, but there’s a world of difference between theory and practice.

Green is safe. For now. The brilliant minds at the Galaxy Garrison can’t figure out how to open her up yet, and she’s currently locked away in an old airplane hangar just a few hours north from the Garrison Academy, much deeper in the desert, so no proper news of her appearance has reached the outside world at least. Apart from the occasional examination for a door they missed the first time around she’s left alone and observed from a safe distance. Green has kept her repairs to things that can’t be easily seen, unsure of how her observers would react to her ‘miraculous’ healing. She can’t test it yet but she’s sure her legs are all back in working order, so she’s at least been making progress.

In hindsight Pidge realizes it’s amazing it took them as long as it did to find her. She practically delivered the Green Lion to their front doorstep like a damn _present_.

All she needed was to slap a big old bow on her Lion and she would have been exactly that.

Green rumbles in amusement at the mental image, the weight of her now constant mental presence calming her Paladin somewhat.

After just three days of careful traveling Pidge is dangerously on edge. It’s not even the exhaustion anymore so much as the guilt of her mistake that eats at her every waking moment.

She knew the barrier crystal had been knocked loose before they even turned toward Earth.

She knew about it, and she forgot to deal with it. She put it off _knowing_ it wasn’t a good idea.

A part of her wonders if Green regrets picking her. She regrets being picked, given how clearly she failed to live up to even the most basic requirements of her position.

Green tries to soothe the Paladin as best she can, to no avail. Pidge can’t stop herself from stewing in her own distress without a bigger problem to focus all of her attention on; it’s one of her biggest flaws, and her Lion won’t be able to stop her either. She’ll just have to manage.

Pidge knows she looks like death warmed over, she certainly feels like it, but every time anyone in this little diner on a backwoods dirt road gives her so much as a glance she bares her teeth with a quiet snarl and a glare so frigid she’s sure could freeze the blood in their veins solid if she held it long enough. She puts down a generous tip with her bill as she leaves, not bothering to hide the limp of her still aching left leg as she heads for the door. She’s too tired to care.

She wonders if someone will phone in a report. She doubts it. Apart from the limp, there’s no reason anyone would connect her with the armored weirdo running around out in the desert that keeps getting an obscenely disproportionate amount of airtime on a number of news stations. She’s kept an eye on the information they’ve all had about it, and she figures she’s safe. For one, she’s not even there anymore. For another, they’ve got her estimated height, age, weight and gender all wrong.

_Unless…_

Unless of course they thought she was Matt.

Her blood runs cold but she keeps limping her way back toward the treeline where she hid her speeder, trying not to think about what that would mean.

They knew Shiro had survived Kerberos. They knew he had, briefly, managed to come back. Maybe they thought the Holts had come back too. Or, one of them at least. They’ve yet to mention her father, and she tries not to wonder why that might be.

This would mean they’d probably start keeping tabs on her mother if they weren’t before, which also means she’s going to have to be very careful when she tries to get back into contact with her.

She gives the speeder a slow once over, checking to make sure nobody slapped a tracking device on it while she was eating, nodding to herself when she finds nothing. Nobody had tried yet, if they had ever even seen the damn thing, but she couldn’t be too careful. Better safe than sorry. She’s already made enough mistakes for the year, thank you.

She leaves her helmet in her bag despite Green’s maternal scolding and sound reasoning, opting to just throw on a pair of sunglasses she had swiped the day before to keep the glare out of her eyes as she rides. Her helmet _would_ work better but if anyone saw her with it she would probably be as good as found out.

As far as anyone knows she’s still running around out in the desert. Why ruin that illusion?

Her shaggy hair whips around her face as she flies through the quiet backroads, cutting off into thickly forested areas whenever she starts nearing any major roadways. It will take a little longer, especially given the steep terrain, maybe a total of a day, but until she figures out what she’s going to do about her Lion she has a disgusting amount of free time to kill.

And Green likes watching the scenery through her vision. Waiting ten thousand years in a jungle temple meant she was itching for a change of scenery, and the forests of the Appalachia’s and all their wildlife Pidge had just reached were a treat for her bored eyes. Even the open flatlands they had just spent the last few days in had been pleasant for her. Pidge knows it’s just as much for her sake as for her Lion’s, but she can’t find it in herself to mind every time the Lion asks her to stop and watch the deer graze in the fields, or the horses run around in the pastures, or listen to the birds in the trees above her head sing for a few long ticks. It helps distract her. It keeps them both centered. It’s something she hadn’t known about her Lion.

Pidge has also learned, over the course of her brief journey, that Green _loves_ puns.

Thankfully (or not, depending on how she looks at it), she can’t understand a single one.

**_Cub, what do you call a tarellian hellcat that sleeps during the night_?**

Pidge shrugs, shifting her weight to the right and guiding her speeder through a small, clean break in the woods. She half wonders if it’s a hunting trail.

It’s odd she doesn’t need to speak. That her Lion can feel the gestures she makes is strange. It really adds another weird layer to the intimacy of their bond that she doesn’t quite know how to put into words. She’s not complaining, but…

**_A zarellian hellcat_!**

She knows the line is supposed to be funny, it certainly _sounds_ funny- her Lion has great delivery. It’s just that Pidge has no context for any of it, and humor is nothing without context, so everything just kind of… falls flat.

**_Was funny. Coran will explain_.**

“I have no doubt, big girl. How you holding up back there?”

**_Bored. Considering using tail to trip scientists, might be worth otherwise pointless energy expenditure. Noisy. Loud. Chatter like a pen of cromari bird-pigs. Very annoying_.**

Pidge grins, understanding quite enough. “And the guys wonder where I get it from.”

**_No idea what you mean_** , the Lion chuckles brightly in her head. **_Your attitude is from before I knew you. Not my fault_.**

“You keep telling yourself that, Green,” Pidge laughs, taking a turn back on to a road as the forest clears. The asphalt is more dirt and stone than anything, it’s in desperate need of repaving, so she figures wherever she is must not see much in the way of vehicular traffic. She slows to follow the nearest speed limit she spots. “Hey, can you tell me where I am? I think I’m lost- _I knew I_ _shoulda took that left turn at Albuquerque_.”

Green groans at the joke, (if she could only roll her eyes) making a dry comment about how Pidge thinks _she_ has a bad sense of humor. The strange chill of her Lion remotely accessing the internet as they’re connected runs over her spine and makes her shudder, prickling at the base of her skull like the threat of an impending migraine. She’s not sure she’ll ever get used to her Lion casually blending machine and mind in her head. She could always disconnect, but that feels like a risky move.

Though knowing it short-circuits all of the Garrison tech in the immediate area around her Lion for a few minutes makes her more willing to tolerate it. Spite is an excellent motivator, and Pidge is nothing if not bitter and vengeful.

**_Markers_.**

Pidge rides a brief stretch down the road, spotting a gas station and an intersection of two quiet streets just beyond the next turn. She shares the image with her Lion and waits for an update.

**_Northeast two hours, then should stop. Storm coming_.**

In hindsight she’s lucky the weather had been so good to her so far.

“Thanks. How’s it look.”

There’s a pause in the connection, like the cat is mulling her words over carefully.

**_Bad. Very bad. Will want to seek shelter_.**

“Of course.”

 

Every instinct in her head is telling her to just keep going, to throw her legs back over her speeder and just leave without even demanding her money back or checking out. Every inch of her body is demanding she get the hell out of there right the hell now.

It’s a room.

With a bed and a bathroom.

That she was able to pay for with her last fistful of crumpled twenties and a pseudonym.

‘ _Marie Curie_ ,’ to be exact.

And it shows. _Holy shit does it show_.

At least the little run down shack Keith had out in the desert had been _clean_. Pidge isn’t even sure she wants to take her shoes off, lest her bare feet touch deeply questionable carpet of _somehow_ indeterminable color. She’s afraid if she sets her bag down she might have little insect hitchhikers hanging out in her stuff when she leaves in the morning- an admittedly ridiculous thought from someone who had just slept outside for the past few nights, but a thought she has nonetheless.

**_Is safe, cub. Only dirty, not dangerous._ **

“Says the semi-immortal giant cat made of metal and science-magic; who has, _by the way_ , never seen a horror movie. I’ve seen at least three that start _exactly like this_.”

**_Hush. Is not that bad._ **

Pidge creeps carefully around her speeder parked at the foot of the bed and moves through the tiny space toward the attached bathroom, flicking the switch on with baited breath. The mold and grit in all the crevices looks so old it might actually have started developing its own civilizations. It might even be at the point of interstellar travel by the looks of it. The water in the faucet runs muddy-green for several seconds before clearing, though she’s not sure she still wants to run her hands under it. There’s no shower curtain, the mirror is flecked with unidentifiable grime, and the towels stacked on the top of the toilet…

They’re best left unmentioned entirely. Yikes.

**_Okay. Maybe is that bad._ **

“Can I go _now_?”

**_No. Storm._** An image of a truly massive storm cell over the area flashes in the teenager’s mind. **_Stay inside. Safer that way._**

Pidge grumbles, limping back to the dusty double bed. She throws her bag on it, resigned to her fate as the last streaks of late afternoon light are swallowed up by the growing clouds. She unzips one of the front pockets and starts rifling through her things.

“By the way, Green, if anyone with a hacksaw and a mask made out of human skin pops out of a hidden door in the wall tonight I’m blaming you for my grisly death.”

**_Human entertainment is very strange._ **

Pidge laughs and sits down to brush her hair. She tries not to grimace as the brush gets caught in her knotted birds-nest of a mane on the second stroke. “Like our _lives_ aren’t?”

Green does the telepathic version of sticking her tongue out. Pidge only sighs and tugs the brush through her hair with a frustrated wince as the first rumbles of thunder form in the distance.

 

She lays awake, exhausted, and she wonders.

She wonders if anyone went through her room at the Garrison. They had to have. If for no other reason than to clean it out when the Gunderson boy disappeared, they had to have gone through her room. Did they realize who she really was? Would they have made the connections? Would her mother have made it for them when she realized her daughter had disappeared too?

If they knew, did the Garrison tell the world who she really was? Was the reveal of her identity part of their announcement when she and Hunk and Lance had vanished into the night with Shiro and Keith, never to be seen again? Three kids running away from the Academy into the desert and disappearing would have _absolutely_ made the news. They couldn’t have hidden it, not with Hunk and Lance’s families on the warpath.

She had heard stories. They would have demanded answers. Not that they would have gotten any that mattered, but they would have at least gotten some kind of public statement. It wouldn’t have been swept completely under the rug, the way she suspects Keith’s was. She knows far too little about his life before, and she has far too many questions.

Did they pack up her things in a box and ship them off to the only human being left on this tiny blue planet who might want them back, or did they throw them out with that week’s trash?

She didn’t have much. Some clothes that had once been Matt’s, a thick quilt her mother had made for her while she was still a toddler, some well-loved astronomy books that had been her father’s, a few dog-eared sci-fi novels she used to skim over in her spare time. Nothing much, nothing that would immediately give her away to anyone who wandered in. It was all only just enough for the memories she left behind to stay fresh and painful every time she called on them.

She hadn’t planned on being there as Gunderson past a year if she could help it anyway. She was there to dig up secrets and prove to the world what she knew in her gut. The Garrison may have been her childhood dream but she was a born schemer- she had fallbacks. She had fallbacks for her fallbacks. She hadn’t ever thought she’d needed them, but she had them all the same. Katie being banned only put the girl on a new path. She just wanted to get all her ducks in a row when she found herself swept up in the electric thrill of stumbling upon alien chatter and nearly forgot all about her original goal of information mining.

She hopes they sent her things back to her mom. Especially that quilt. It was threadbare from the kind of rough use young kids put their things through but it was something deeply precious to her all the same.

She closes her eyes and pulls one of the pillows to her chest. The steady drum of rain soothes her thoughts and she exhales quietly, the telepathic purr of a Lion pushing her into a dream as her pained, shallow breathing steadies out.

She missed the rain.

She hadn’t realized how much she had missed it.

She wonders if her father and her brother miss it too.

 

Pidge dreams of the Castle of Lions. The sight of it warms her from the inside out.

It’s beautiful and glimmering as it orbits a strange planet, the light of a distant sun reflecting from the towers and flashing majestically off of the silver-white paneling.

It orbits Iilaria- she doesn’t know why she knows the name of the small, glimmering orange and gold planet below her, with vast teal oceans and hazy white clouds in the sky; she’s certainly never been here before. She can’t remember anyone mentioning it by name or pointing it out on any of their starmaps.

It doesn’t take long for her to realize why.

The planet swells, pulsing, throbbing a dull shade of scarlet before suddenly crumbling inward and immediately shattering out into a hundred billion fragments of stone and iron.

The Castle of Lions orbits what _remains_ of Iilaria.

The shields go up a frantic shrieking heartbeat before the fragments of the planet rain down and the deafeningly thunderous noise of the shattered world battering against their defenses sends a cold chill down through Pidge’s limbs. It’s even more terrifying than it should be- she’s watching from _outside_ the Castle, only just caught within the protective veil of the particle barrier by chance. She was very nearly _shattered_.

She feels her back arch and her shoulders tense with a rage she cannot place and a deep voice she doesn’t recognize echoes in a roar past her teeth.

“ _That frothing quiznack_!”

Iilaria was the peacemaker planet. The Ilray people had served as the brokers of diplomacy for longer than Altea had sailed the cosmos. It was the place where treaties were written, where wars were ended. It was neutral ground for all worlds. It had served as such to the intergalactic empires for thousands and thousands of years, back for nearly so long as species have flown beyond the familiar comforts of their own solar systems.

It was once the world where conflicts young and old would go to die. Feuds older than stars now burning had been settled on the soils of Illaria.

It was where a budding war had come to settle before it grew any worse.

With the Empress dead, and Zarkon rising in her place, the conflict he claimed he had never wanted could be put to rest. The sins he wanted to atone for could be cleansed, and everything could be repaired- maybe not made as it was before, but it could be repaired all the same. It was all anyone wanted.

So the Paladins had believed him. _Hoped_.

They had placed in him their desperate, fervent, painful _hope_. After everything…

They wanted to hope.

Now the world of Iilaria stands, it _crumbles_ as the official birthplace of a war for domination that would come to span ten thousand years.

She bristles as the knowledge comes to her, from within her, from her own memories that are not her own and from the voice from behind her teeth she knows but somehow _doesn’t_.

It was a trap.

She nearly died.

Had the Castle arrived when it was meant to, had the Lions departed for the designated meeting area when they had scheduled…

She would have died.

_She_ might have lived. She was a Lion, after all. She could be repaired.

But the Paladin now roaring with fury within her would certainly have died. His body was not nearly so strong as hers.

Pidge recoils from the thought as the dream continues around her. This isn’t a dream, it’s a _memory_ \- one of the Green Lion’s memories. Something her Lion had never told her; something nobody had ever told her. She knows Green wouldn’t have let her see this on purpose. Her hazy consciousness can’t even begin to wonder why she’s seeing this now.

She roars and flexes her claws, arching her tail over her back in preparation as distant voices echo in her head. The presence of the other Lions pulses over her in waves as they all struggle to contain their fury. The pilots within their heads struggle to control each other.

The arms of Voltron are screaming for the particle barrier to drop. The fury of Green and Red, of their Paladins bounces and feeds off the other, fueling the growing fire within them both.

There is not a word in the entire universe to describe the rage festering in their bodies.

They want to tear Zarkon’s head off personally and if the barrier goes down now they’ll fly off without a second thought. She can already feel her jets firing up, her teeth gnashing with a bloodlust she shares with her pilot. She wants to rend her former ally limb from limb even as a tiny part of her knows she’d never even get close enough to bare her teeth.

Blue and Yellow are just as distraught but they beg their sister Lions, their brother Paladins to stand down- they can’t possibly fight an entire Galra division, not on this dangerous battlefield, not in the newly spilled blood of the innocents, not when the Black Lion is fresh in the hands of her untrained Apprentice who now screams out over the comms at the older Paladins to _retreat_.

She can feel her Paladin’s fury overwhelming her senses. She knows deep down in her wiring she shouldn’t be letting her rage, his rage, _their_ rage consume her, but the betrayal is still less than a year old, the scars are still fresh, and now _this_ … It’s all she can do to keep from lashing out at the barrier standing between herself and the shattered planet with her own claws.

“ _And just who are you to tell me what to do, Pr_ -”

“ _I am your Black Lion_!” the Apprentice roars over the comms. It reverberates all the way down to the deadly sharp tips of her claws and flushes her with sobering hot shame. Her Paladin feels no such shame. “ _I am the standing Black Lion and I am ordering you to return to the Castle- NOW_!”

The Black Lion appears in front of her face, tail lashing violently with the erratic beat of the nightmarish hailstorm beyond the barrier as she looms intimidatingly over her fellow Lion. Her golden eyes flash with the terrifying ( _and terrified_ ) wrath of her pilot.

“ _Return to your hangar or I will carry you back like a cub Kharine_!”

Black knows Green has already come to her senses. Her rage is already beginning to congeal into bitter, broken anguish and the Black Lion soothes her sister in their own mindspace, separate from their Paladins. She understands. _Stars above does she understand_. The Apprentice snarls at the elder pilot as the Green Lion waits in place, unable to move without his energy. Black’s jaw twitches open in warning.

“ _Kharine_!”

She whips around without another word, with tense, unsteady hands guiding her back to her hangar. She’s the last of the Lions to return to the Castle.

She’s barely settled in her hangar before a portal opens up at the Castle’s helm, and the doors have barely shut properly behind her when they’re suddenly rocketing halfway across the cosmos, still wearing the particle barrier that had just saved everyone from a premature end.

Her Paladin storms out over her tongue without so much as a second word to her as he throws his helmet across the hangar in a fury. It bangs violently against a wall and clatters to the floor, rolling and skittering back to bump against her claws. She purrs low in her throat and ducks down until her entire body is level and brushes the floor, trying to soothe the tiny creature overwhelmed in his own pain. She knows him. _She knows_. Her little Altean is afraid, and that is why he rages. He fists his hands in his tangled shoulder-length blond hair and _screams_ away his emotions.

Zarkon was like a brother to him once. His betrayal blindsided everyone- the Red Paladin barely made it out alive, the beloved Green and Blue Apprentices now lie dead and buried in the soil of Altea, and the Black Lion herself is terrified of facing him again knowing now who he has become. She understands that he hurts, why he hurts.

But Zarkon was the mentor to the Apprentice. He was like a father figure to the Apprentice, he knew them when they were still small and young and had cared for them once, loved them once, as all the Paladins had. He tried to _kill_ the Apprentice of the Black Lion himself with his own two hands.

He had tried, and very nearly succeeded, to kill his own Apprentice.

And if the Apprentice can still make rational decisions through all of _that_ , then so can he.

“ _Oh shut your quiznak, girl_ ,” Kharine spits. She doesn’t take it personally; she hears the tears in his voice, burning in his eyes and in his throat. She’s loved him for years and for decades, since the first moment she first saw the starving curiosity bubbling in his mind. She’s loved him as deeply as she’s loved any of her Paladins. One bitter word under a horrible circumstance won’t hurt her any. Her tail wraps around her side and tucks against the side of her jaw snuggly as she watches him pace in rapt concern. Without him at her helm she hasn’t the strength for anything else. Only so much, only so little of her energy is her own.

 “ _Kharine_!”

A tall Paladin in blue armor jogs into the hangar, his helmet tucked securely under his arm. One hand clasps the shoulder of the Altean carefully, comfortingly. Pidge takes note of his large ears, his golden eyes, his short dull purplish fur lightly peppered with age- the Blue Paladin of Zarkon’s rise to power was Galra. She doesn’t know if she’s surprised or not by this revelation.

“ _Kharine, don’t you ever_ ,” he starts, voice trembling, “ _you and Anduel are going to give me a heart condition. I know it’s hard to listen to the commands of someone so young, but that’s no excuse. If my reckless Red Lion can obey, so can you._ ”

“ _I know Xarel. I know_.” Her Paladin wipes his face roughly. She nuzzles his mind gently in their shared headspace, purring to herself as he reciprocates. “ _I just… Where are we headed_?”

“ _I know not_.”

He knows not, but she feels the other Lions inform her.

Altea.

_Home_.

She doesn’t know she’ll only see Altea whole four more times after this day.

She doesn’t know she’ll be trapped in her hangar to watch her birthplace burn around her, burning on forever in her nightmares.

She doesn’t know the isolated hell that awaits her in the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the temple and the vines that will cradle her as she waits in the miserable gulf between sleeping and waking for ten thousand lonely years, waiting for someone worthy enough for her to open her heart again.

A figure in black armor storms into the hangar, voice wavering somewhere in the space between terror and fury as they rip off their helmet in one rough stroke and fling it to the ground. Long hair falls loosely around armored shoulders as they round on Kharine, and the Blue Paladin steps away with his hands raised defensively. A fist clad in black swings upward and strikes the blond Altean square in the jaw-

The memory, the dream cuts out hazily, sinking into blackness. The alien blur between girl and Lion fades back into the recesses of Pidge’s mind as she sleeps into an uneasy, dreamless sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think most if not all of the Paladins would have some unaddressed anxiety issues. We all know Hunk does, and boy do I relate to that, but for Pidge I think a lot of it is the kind she keeps to herself, the kind that she doesn’t even like to acknowledge. The kind that leads to her kicking herself in her own ass because as paranoid as she is, as much as she overthinks everything, she still slips up and she hates that she slips up.
> 
> I feel like it needs to be said right now that we as the audience know who Zarkon was 10000 years ago, but I think only Shiro and maybe Keith know too. I don’t think the other Paladins know yet. I need to rewatch everything I’m sure. So, for now I'm going off that and this is a weird dream for Pidge that isn’t going to make a lot of sense, and she understands that she’s missing a ton of the pieces for this puzzle.
> 
> Yes, I had Kharine use ‘quiznak’ wrong on purpose. He’s like a more romantically successful Lance, if by ‘romantically successful’ I actually mean ‘almost started at least 13 interstellar incidents because he kept sleeping with people he should not have been and successfully started 4 because he refused to learn from his dangerous near misses’. We all have our OC’s, and he is mine. He is trash and I love him. Though to be fair if I was surrounded by powerful sexy aliens all the time my pansexual ass would probably be the same way.
> 
> Also I wrote a quick 6000+ word prequel thing that ties in to a lot of headcanons I have about the war that lead to the dispersal of Voltron. It's specifically about the betrayal, and I’ve laid the foundation about what happens in it here with the Green Lion’s memory of the destruction of Iilaria (huh, I wonder why we saw that, that can't be good) and even though it won’t be addressed in this fic for a while yet I am considering putting it out as a oneshot and marking it as part of a series or something since it belongs in the universe of this fic.
> 
> I was thinking about sitting on it for a while but if people are cool with spoilers this early in the game I can put it out there whenever. It’s already done.


	6. Dominoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And with one little push, the dominoes start to fall. But from where we push, we can only see so far ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bolded text is altered voice, it will make sense in context, don’t worry. If it doesn’t please let me know. If you have any comments or concerns by all means leave them here or on tumblr; or if you just want to yell that’s cool too. I’m always down for yelling.
> 
> I plan to have the next update, which is part two of this chapter, up Sunday night, and if that doesn’t happen on time don’t worry. I’m a little sick right now but I should be fine by the end of the weekend. Probably. If I'm not I'll complain all about it on tumblr.

Pidge rouses to the feeling of her Lion mentally fidgeting in their shared connection. It’s a weird sensation, almost like the telepathic version of shifting your weight from side to side or drumming your fingers on the surface of a desk. But in your brain.

**_Cub._ **

Pidge rolls over in the dark, staring at the rain pattering against the dirty window with tired eyes. She pouts. Forgot to close the curtains before she dozed off. She shifts around on top of the bed as she tries to get marginally more comfortable. It’s been a few days, and the pain in her ribs doesn’t seem to be getting any better with the passage of time or the frequent inhalation of what she realizes is an admittedly unwise amount of over the counter painkillers.

**_Cub._ **

“Yo,” she yawns, taking a long blink as she stares at the storm roaring outside. A flash of white lightning fills the sky, thunder following it in one, two, three, four Altean ticks. Just over five seconds. The strike was five miles away. She blinks again and pushes her face down into the dusty pillows.

**_Interesting update, thought I should mention. They seem to think brother in here. Keep saying name. Keep waiting for him to speak. Say they can wait him out. ‘Need to eat sometime’._ **

Pidge bolts upright, honey-hazel eyes frantic with an unnerving combination of anger and joy. Her chest throbs sharply at the motion but she pays it no mind as the gears in her head start to whirl in excitement. And exhaustion. Her head feels light, fuzzy almost, but she ignores it all the same.

“You can project my voice, right?”

The Lion hesitates. She obviously doesn’t like wherever this might be going. **_Affirmative..._**

“Can you make me sound like him? Like my brother?”

Green scoffs in their shared headspace, her tone playfully offended. **_You wound, cub. Of course I can. Deception is in my code._**

The teenager pushes herself back on the bed with her hands until her back is flat against the headboard before she pulls her legs up into a crossed position. She readies herself, excitement pumping through her veins. She has no idea what she’s going to say but she knows she can’t _wait_ to say it. She doesn’t know why but she’s just itching to start a fight right now. There’s a fire smoldering in her bones that wasn’t there when she fell asleep.

“Let me know when you’re ready big girl.”

**_Speak._ **

Pidge closes her eyes, looking through her Lion’s golden-tinged vision in the hangar. She’s lying in repose, but not willingly- something is keeping her there. She can’t sit up against whatever is holding her down. The voice that echoes off the walls when she speaks is so familiar and foreign all at once it feels like a slender crystal shard right through her heart. “ **Where the fuck is Iverson**?”

She bites her lip as she tries not to laugh. Ok, so maybe that’s not what the Matt _they_ _knew_ would have said, but that’s certainly the Matt _she_ remembers. He was good at playing innocent when the teachers were around, sure, but he’s also the reason she was so good at sneaking into and around the Garrison after he vanished on Kerberos. The things he taught her, the stories he used to tell her… It was a small miracle he never got caught.

A voice rings out from somewhere above the Lion’s head and Pidge instinctively turns to see where the sound is coming from, only half surprised when Green’s head moves with her.  Evidently the people around the Lion are _completely_ surprised if their terrified shrieks and frantic sprinting and backpedaling are anything to go by. The glass on the observation deck is one way, so she sees only a distant reflection of her Lion in the dark surface, but that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to see inside. She knows that voice.

“ _Matthew Copernicus Holt_.”

The Paladin snarls, her brother’s furious voice emanating from the Lion. A bitter threat against the speaker for daring to utter that name dies on her tongue as her Lion quickly moves to comfort her again. She’s pretending to be someone else, she needs to pick her words with _some_ semblance of forethought.

Pidge remembers the way he said the names of the lost men during the press conferences that would come to follow in the weeks after the Kerberos mission was declared a disaster. She remembers the weight he put in those syllables, the blame he hoisted onto every consonant and the disappointment he put in every vowel. She could see beneath the sadness to find the frustration, the embarrassment. It wasn’t that the Hecate mission series was cursed (even Pidge had to wonder at this point) but _no_ , it was that it was _pilot error_. Because that somehow made more sense.

She remembers the rage she felt in that first moment, clear as day and deadly sharp. It hasn’t dulled at all since.

“ **Show your face**.”

She doesn’t expect a response. She doesn’t know what she expects. When the light flicks on behind the glass to reveal five unnervingly familiar faces Pidge has no idea what she was expecting him to do.

Iverson is there, as are four of his superiors. She recognizes two of them immediately; Zawati and Gyeong. Zawati was considered the brightest engineer of her generation, and she was responsible for revolutionizing a staggering number of advancements in the field of aeronautic engineering over the last forty odd years- she was Hunk’s biggest idol. He had always talked about how much he had wanted to one day pick her brain whenever they were studying back at the Garrison. She wonders if he would still feel the same way right now, with her looming stoically over a captured Voltron Lion.

And Gyeong, she was one of the best _if not the single best pilot_ the Garrison had ever produced, pioneering a number of new techniques and performing in a number of disastrous emergency situations with the kind of level-headed brilliance that she was essentially considered the mother of modern space-flight. Until Kerberos she had apparently been Shiro’s mentor, and if his stories were anything to go off of she had held every expectation that he would usurp her status as the Garrison’s finest pilot. Pidge wonders if she’d be proud of him now.

The men in the room beside them Pidge doesn’t know offhand, but she knows they have enough stripes and stars on their uniforms that they’re the ones in charge here.

And that Matt would know who they were.

Crap.

If nothing else, at least Pidge is halfway decent at thinking on her feet. She tries to channel her older brother’s sass into her tone when she speaks.

“ **What have you done with Takashi?** ”

“Takashi is not here, Matthew.” The truth, obviously, but they don’t need to know she knows.

“ **Like shit**.”

**_LANGUAGE, CUB._ **

“ **I know he escaped the alien prison ship we were on. I know he came back to Earth. What did you do to him?** ”

“The better question, Matthew,” the tall greying man beside Iverson growls, stepping closer to the glass as he speaks, “is what happened to you? What happened to your crew on Kerberos?”

“ **What happened to us was a close encounter of the fourth kind by an interstellar empire of evil- but you already knew that, didn’t you? The probes would have seen it. And I know Takashi would have told you.** ”

The man doesn’t back down. If anything, her bitter, defiant little display of attitude just pissed him right the hell off. He opens his mouth to speak again but Pidge cuts him off with a particularly vicious snarl that reverberates in the hollows of her Lion and bounces off the high hangar walls. She doesn’t want to give them the opportunity to back her into a corner just yet and decides to do a quick shift. She doesn’t want them to catch their footing yet.

“ **Where’s my sister?** ”

That gives the people in the observation room pause. She can see the way they all still, completely unprepared for the sudden change of questioning.

“ **What have you done to my family? What did you tell them?** ”

“Matthew, if you just come out we can-”

“ **I know they aren’t here! I tried to go home!** ” She cuts in. She can feel her words getting away from her as her heart leaps into her throat. Her act is blending with her truth. The familiar weight of Green’s concern settles in her chest and she sucks in a shaky breath. The tears in her eyes are certainly helping to sell her authenticity. “ **What have you done to my mother? Where- where is my sister?** ”

The greying man looks like he wants to climb up into the Lion and strangle her (or, rather, Matt) personally, but before he can speak again Gyeong steps in. Her hands are raised in a placating gesture but her face is stone cold as she takes control of the situation. Her voice is surprisingly soft though.

“Your mother is not here, Matthew, but we can get her for you. Do you want me to get her for you? It’s only a quick plane ride back from Salem- she moved back to your hometown after you and your father disappeared. Your mother is fine.”

The truth, but not entirely. She didn’t leave until Pidge had already vanished too. _Details._

“ **What about Katie?** ”

Her old name feels weird on her lips.

It doesn’t fit anymore; like shoes she grew out of.

She’s not sure it will ever fit again. She’s not sure if that bothers her.

Gyeong levels her cool gaze with the opaque gold eyes of the Lion, searching for a face behind them she won’t be able to find. The truth of her words surprises the Paladin. Pidge had expected a lie of some sort. Evidently, so did Iverson and the others given the range of expressions they turn on her.

“Your sister is gone, Matthew. She disappeared. We don’t know what happened to her.”

“ **You lost my sister?** ” The echoing anger of Matt’s voice in the hangar knots Pidge’s stomach up painfully. She wonders if he would be this upset over- _of course he would_. They may have had over a decade dividing them but they were as close as twins. He would be beyond livid if anything happened to her. There wouldn’t even be a word in the dictionary for what he would feel.

She _can’t wait_ to see how he reacts to her presence in outer space. She briefly wonders if Shiro will get punched. He once mentioned something about promising the Holts that if he ever made it back without them- _which he had no intention of doing if he could help it_ \- that he’d watch out for her. Somehow she doesn’t think letting her fly an alien warship in an interstellar rebellion is something her anyone else would consider ‘watching out for her’.

Then again it’s not like anyone could stop her. Matt would have to pry her Lion from her cold, dead hands first. Or, pry her cold, dead body out from her Lion. Whatever. The metaphor stands.

She doesn’t realize Green’s busted tail is thrashing around with her Paladin’s anger until she hears it crash violently into some equipment behind her. Pidge breathes and lets her Lion still with a silent apology. She can’t afford to waste what little energy she has on useless actions. Green needs to save her strength for healing. Plus, that little stunt is going to lead to all sorts of poking and prodding later.

“She disappeared a few months ago, along with some other kids her age in a strange incident involving a machine like the one you have now, we believe it may be connected. We didn’t even realize it was her until after-”

“ **I don’t want to hear your excuses** ,” she hisses. Exhaustion sets in again, exhaustion blended with sharp pain sinking its teeth into her neck, trying to drag her back down onto the dusty pillows of the hotel room her physical aspect is still stuck in. She silently counts only a tick between the bright lightning strike that flashes over her closed eyes and the echo of thunder that fills the room. “ **How can I trust anything you have to say?** ”

“Because if you just come out, or let me in, we can show you the records,” Gyeong looks frustrated now. Her tactics aren’t working.  She’s not in control of the situation. All five of the people behind the glass, for all their sway and status in the world can’t seem to make a break in the shell of their formerly obedient prodigy and the exhausted anger on their faces because of it is crystal clear. “We can show you what happened while you were gone if you just exit the… the vehicle. Robot. Lion.”

“ **I wasn’t gone** ,” she sneers. A strange idea shoves its way to the forefront of her mind as she continues. “ **I was kidnapped. And I’m not going to talk to you again until you can prove to me that Katie is alive**.”

She pulls back suddenly with a turn of her head, listening to the furious chatter in the hanger but removing herself from her Lion’s mind with a murmured apology. Green’s body settles back into an almost sphynx like resting state as she stops reacting to the world around her.

“I’m sorry, girl,” she says, sinking back into the pillows with a half-yawn. Her stomach churns with painful hunger. She blearily considers reaching for her bag to see if there’s any trail mix left before deciding she’s too tired. “I really wasn’t thinking when I did that, huh?”

**_Not really._ **

“Aaaand you don’t pull any punches,” Pidge groans, sticking out her tongue. The throbbing in her chest feels almost worse than it did earlier.

**_Not really._ **

The echoed rage of the officers in the observation deck seems to amuse the Lion as the pair listen in, blending the echoing voices with the steady hum of heavy rain. There are threats, promises, bribes, but every time they receive no response they only seem to get angrier. Pidge is almost embarrassed at how quickly these people have lost control.

Almost.

She’s still bitter as hell. She can let them stew in _their_ frustration for a while. It’s only fair.

 

It’s only at the insistence of her Lion that Pidge even considers using the shower in the morning- or what she thinks is morning. It certainly seems lighter out, but not by much. It’s hard to tell what time it could be under the current weather.

It’s only after takes a long look in the mirror that she realizes she’s filthier now than she would be using mildly questionable water, so she concedes to a shower. It’s lukewarm at best but she can’t help but feel a thousand times better as she scrubs the thin layer of grime she’s been building off of her skin. She works slowly, taking her time as she carefully cleans her tender bruised flesh, letting her mind wander.

The bruises are more yellow-green than anything and nowhere near as dark as they were before. They seem to take up less space on her body too. At least she’s improving there. Her chest and stomach still ache far too much to feel any different, though. At least the latter she can shush with food.

“ _Holy shit Alteans are shapeshifters_!” She sputters as a mouthful of shower water follows that statement.

**_… Yes?_ **

“That’s why the armor fits in the bag just fine- and that’s why it fits me so well.”

**_Yes, were you not-?_ **

“I didn’t have time to dwell on it then, Green,” Pidge chuckles and shakes her head, scratching her fingers through her wet hair. “It’s been a busy couple of months, I haven’t completely been myself.”

She can feel the Lion doing the mental version of a bemused shaking of her head. Pidge rolls her eyes.

“Don’t laugh. Shall I bring to mind the speeder we both forgot about?” she quips, only now realizing her voice seems to have finally lost its scratchy, raw edge. At least she’s healing.

**_You shan’t_** , the Lion warns lightly.

She steps out of the shower, using the shirt she slept in to pat herself dry. The water she can tolerate. The towels she refuses to trust. She has her hard limits. “That’s what I thought.”

She pauses in front of the mirror. She can see the patterns of freckles on her skin the settled blood had hidden, and she traces a finger over a few of the markings she can see again. Cygnus, on her right clavicle. Gemini, square over her heart, in the same place as her brother’s. The only freckle-constellations they had that matched. Draco, arching up to touch her left shoulder.

Her body looks hollower than she remembers. She looks harder too, more angular. There’s firm muscle there, after months of constant training of course there is, she expected no less; but she still looks _different_. Like there’s less of her to go around than there used to be. Than there should be.

She doesn’t remember looking so _small_.

She bites her lip and turns away.

Pidge dresses herself as carefully as she can, taking her time with her only slightly swollen ankle and her frustratingly tender ribs as she moves. She’s better, but she’s not _that_ better. She hums distractedly as she works, pursing her lips and bobbing her head to the improvised beat. Once she’s dressed again she wraps her hair in the damp shirt and scrubs casually at it as she limps back over to the bed. She _can_ put her weight on her leg again, she’s just not sure she _should_. It still throbs after a few minutes.

The rain is still falling outside, much lighter than it had been last night, but Green is adamant she doesn’t try to drive off until the grey weather clears up. Pidge tosses the damp shirt onto her speeder and shakes her head out like a dog before reaching for her ankle brace. She pauses, giving her Lion a gentle telepathic poke.

“Hey, is there somewhere nearby where I can go get something to eat?”

 

The closest thing in her limited walking distance was, for once not a diner, but instead a local sports bar. _Ooh la la_.

Not quite what Pidge had in mind, but there would be food. And she may have ‘accidentally’ bumped into another person in the roadside motel on her way out and may have by coincidence stumbled across a couple of crisp, clean twenty dollar bills that had just so happened to be in his wallet at the time, so she would have plenty to eat with should she feel so inclined. She is becoming unnervingly comfortable with bending the arrow of her moral compass in the name of survival. She doubts Shiro would approve. But she knows Matt would, so she decides not to let it bother her too much.

She ruffles the little beads of rainwater out of her hair as she looks around.

It’s nicer than she was expecting, given the state of the motel just down the road, though that kind of praise is really rather faint all things considered. There are windows only on the front of the smallish building and the lighting isn’t what she’d call great, but it smells good enough and her shoes don’t stick to the floor. The hostess gives her a curious look but seats her with a shrug at a quiet corner booth after Pidge says she’s just here to meet up with some friends. She blends in though, to her surprise- there are a few other teenagers there talking about their summer plans.

She keeps one eye on the flatscreen in the corner with hockey on as she sips her soda. The sugary drink fizzing and bubbling against her tongue is yet another in a long list of sensations or experiences she hadn’t realized she had missed.

Apparently it’s almost three in the afternoon. She didn’t realize she had slept in so long. She’s not normally one for sleeping in at all, actually.

She remembers the rare days her family would spend cuddled up half asleep in front of the television or with books, nestled in a mountain of plush pillows and blankets when the storms got as rough as they did last night. It was a nice way to spend the day.

Pidge casually works her way through a small appetizer of chips and salsa (stars alive how she missed salsa) and tries not to fidget as the distress in her belly worsens rather than eases. She suspects it’s some premature cramps, but she doubts she’d be this early. If the stress of suddenly being part of Voltron and fighting to defend the universe couldn’t throw her freakishly rigid cycle out of whack then _nothing_ would. She tries to center her focus away from her pains by tracing out the Altean alphabet on the table with a fingernail, but that quickly turns into a frustrating exercise as she can never remember the seventeenth character without a gentle reminder from her Lion.

“You need anything, honey?” The warm voice of her waitress appears above her head, startling her out of her thoughts. Pidge glances up in surprise. “Another basket of chips? A refill on your drink? Change for the payphone?”

The teenager hesitates and narrows her eyes. The waitress- Tabitha, if her nametag is accurate, takes a half-step back and smiles as brightly as she can manage under the Paladin’s sudden cold stare. Ice may not be her element but she can still be staggeringly chilly when she wants to be.

“Why would I need to use the payphone?”

Tabitha averts her eyes for a moment and shrugs. “Sorry to assume. You’re the only person in here not a cell phone, I just thought- Sorry,” she hesitates, one hand twisting, clearly trying to remember a name she was never given. Pidge grabs the first one she can think of, lying on instinct.

“Abby, and it’s ok,” Pidge gives the woman a half-smile. “Just waiting on my dorks to show up, that’s all.”

“Not a problem Abby,” Tabitha nods. “Do you want to just order now or do you want to wait until your friends get here?”

She shakes her head and gives the woman a more sincere smile as she calls on the memory of her teammates, one hand running through the loose curls her shaggy hair has dried into. “If those guys got lost again that’s on them, they can get their food to-go whenever they finally show up. If you could get me a cheeseburger, that’d be great. I have a feeling they’ll still be a while yet.”

“Sure thing. You want all the fixins on that?”

“God yes,” the hungry plea escapes before she can catch it and Pidge ducks her head down in embarrassment as the woman laughs lightly.

“Comin right up. I’ll be back with another drink for you in just a minute too, alright?”

She just nods and glances back towards the hockey game. At least she can’t make a fool of herself to the television set. The tv won’t judge her.

 

Pidge is forever grateful nobody had been around to see her gorge herself on a cheeseburger the size of her own head. She’s not sure she’d ever be able to live that down. She’s sure it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Well, except for Green, but apart from the occasional tease about how the Paladin will choke if she keeps going like that the Lion didn’t seem to be bothered. Then again, ancient sentient magical robot lions probably wouldn’t be. She’s probably seen far worse.

After the first hour by herself Tabitha starts hovering around the table, spending a few extra seconds checking in on “Abby” as her other tables start to clear out.

After the first hour and a half she develops an expression that makes Pidge think of Allura, back when the two of them had a heart to heart talk a few weeks ago- had it really only been so recently? It’s the same look of almost sisterly concern marring her brows and twisting at her lips. She wants to pretend it’s nothing, but she can see a mirror of Allura in Tabitha’s features and it twists her heart.

After two hours Tabitha settles herself across from Pidge with a drink of her own and another platter of chips and salsa.

“I’ve got a quick break, since it’s all but dead in here right now,” she smiles, “how’re you holdin up?”

Pidge blinks. For a moment she sees the Altean in the soft light of the star projector again and she has to force herself to think of anything else. She hopes Allura and Coran are safe. She hopes they all are. “I’m ok. Just tired, that’s all.”

“My baby brother said the same thing a couple weeks ago,” the woman shakes her head wryly, “kept insisting, until I finally pried it out of him that his boyfriend dumped him. And right before graduation, too. You’ve got that same sad little kicked puppy-dog look and I just don’t feel right leaving you alone right now.”

The Paladin bites her lip and looks away.

“I’m just worried about a friend, that’s all.”

“One of the ones supposed to pick you up?”

“Nah,” she shrugs, taking a long sip of her drink. Tabitha pushes the platter chips toward her with one hand. Pidge finds it hard _not_ to talk, the words just… come out on their own. She missed having other humans to connect to- a Lion just isn’t the same. “He’s the brother of one of them, though. Really nice guy.”

She saw the way Keith watched out for Shiro, and the way he did the same. The way they would sometimes sit together and talk about the past in hushed voices, the conversation about something only they shared, the way they understood each other, the tones they used, the jokes they shared. They may not be family exactly, she figures someone would have mentioned it by now, but she knows a brother when she sees one. She has plenty of experience on that front.

“What about him?”

A flash of her forgotten nightmare flares up behind her eyes and makes her heart skip a beat or ten in raw fear. Pidge can’t help but hope he’s ok. That they’re all ok. _It was only a nightmare. Only a nightmare_. She feels her throat choke up as she speaks.

“He’s had it pretty rough, that’s all. Things aren’t going well for him last I heard.”

Tabitha nods and takes a sip of her own soda, glancing away from the wilting teenager. Guilt settles over her face as Pidge bites her lip.

“You’re in a bit of a far off spot,” she says, quickly changing the subject. “If you’re in the bathroom when they show up I can tell them where you are- what do your friends look like?”

Pidge grins. “There’s a big guy, like bear size, he’s intimidating but super nice, obscenely smart too. We were neck and neck for being top of our class for a while, before we, uh, transferred; then there’s a beanpole with skinny eyebrows and a megaphone for a mouth, he flirts with everyone and his lines are just _awful_ so you might want to watch out; and then there’s a broody guy with fingerless gloves that kids are drawn to like a magnet despite his serious case of ‘chronic resting murder face’. He’s not nearly as mean as he looks though,” she laughs wryly, catching a thin tear forming at the corner of one eye. The distant rumble of Green’s purr echoes low in her chest and she smiles, having half-forgotten her Lion was still there. She misses her friends so much. She can’t wait until this is all behind her.

Tabitha takes a good scoop of salsa and hums, voice gentle. She sounds more like Shiro than Allura at this point, and the thought tugs roughly at Pidge’s heartstrings. “Where’re y’all heading?”

Pidge sniffles, cursing her body for betraying her. Her rational mind drags up a decent story she had been working on over the past few days, in case anyone ever got curious enough to ask. Though given her own recent case of ‘chronic resting murder face’ and generally hostile aura she kind of figured she’d never need to use it.

“Going out to see my brother. He just got back from a really long trip, so we’re all driving out to surprise him.”

“Your friends sound like good guys to do that.”

Pidge snorts, a shrill squeak of distress escaping her mouth as soda suddenly burns in her nostrils. _She did not miss this at all_. Matt used to make her do this on purpose all the time, though she usually found her revenge in making him laugh-choke on his food with terrible jokes. The woman across from her bites her knuckles and slips her a napkin, trying not to laugh as the teenager fans her face and dabs at her nose with tiny sounds torn between amusement and pain.

“Eh,” she groans, happier tears stinging in her eyes as she holds her nose in the paper napkin. “They’re pretty cool I guess, even if they’re still a bunch of nerds.”

“Pretty sure being at the top of your class makes you a nerd too,” Tabitha teases lightly.

Pidge casually waves a chip around as the tingling in her nose fades, grinning brighter than she has in who knows how long. “Nerds of a feather.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically the entire first part of this chapter was a very sleep-deprived me with a bad headcold dangling some bait in front of our girl and watching as she took it hook, line, and sinker. I’m not actually sure if it works because I had nobody to run it by, but this is what happened and I’m sticking with it.
> 
> Interesting note, laying some foundation for future stuff here: Salem is not Matt’s hometown. It’s Pidge’s. He spent a lot of his youth there but Matt was born elsewhere and Pidge doesn’t know that. There’s still a lot about her family this girl doesn’t know yet.
> 
> A lack of correction on that little detail means it’s not Matt and Gyeong understands that. Nobody else did, only her. But why would she?
> 
> Why indeed.
> 
> Another thing: Matt got his middle name from the astronomer, whereas Pidge got her middle name from the cosmonaut, and there’s actually a reason for the difference.
> 
>  
> 
> Also I couldn’t resist (I’m sorry) so if you want to see what happened during Zarkon’s betrayal before we get back to the Castle and hear it straight from the Princess go read ‘The Apprentice and the Morningstar’. I’ve tagged it, but I feel I should still mention it’s a bit on the bloody side. And by a bit I mean a lot.


	7. Waterlogged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will this rain ever stop?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, quick note: I just remembered that I have jury summons coming up, so I’m going to do my best to update as much as possible before then since I don’t know how long it will take. If I’m lucky I won’t even end up on a jury or it will be for that afternoon only, but I have no idea. It could just as easily be something long. Thankfully I’m allowed to bring my laptop so I’ll probably be able to keep writing while I’m there if that’s the case.
> 
> So this update is early and the next one is tomorrow. Hopefully I can turn this into a one update a day thing before I go but I make zero promises.

So, maybe she fucked up.

No.

Maybe isn’t a very strong word.

So, she _definitely_ fucked up.

Pidge fucked up _big time_. Lance’s screw-up with the pretty alien bounty hunter was nothing in comparison. She’ll never tease him about that again. She might even apologize for all the times she did. In hindsight she really should have seen this coming. She stuck her foot right in her own mouth because she was tired and angry and really just wanted to start some shit.

**_And start shit you did. Well done, cub_**.

A request for any information on the missing Katherine Valentina ‘Katie’ Holt, also known under the alias Pidge Gunderson ( _well that answers that question_ ), was now making the rounds on the news. They weren’t connecting her to the weirdo in the desert, but that hardly mattered. An old picture of her from before the launch of the Kerberos mission was being used above her name, because evidently an unnervingly thorough description down to her last known height and weight was not enough. She shrinks inward as she watches. Apart from the length of her hair and the now permanent bags under her eyes she knows she looks the same now as she did then. They even made mention of the mole on the back of her right shoulder-

What- where were they even getting this information?

And oh _would you look at that_ , they were offering a reward.

Oops.

**_Next time, I speak instead?_ **

“Please do, big girl. Please do,” Pidge mumbles under her breath as she throws down the money for her bill. She goes over, a lot over, and she can’t help it. She hogged a table for three hours, and Tabitha went out of her way to make sure she was ok and then spent the last twenty minutes of her break distracting Pidge with the classes she was taking at the community college, talking about how she was finishing up her degree and was looking at becoming a physics teacher at a nearby private school. The two talked wonderfully nerdy for a few minutes before her break ended.

So she tips as much as she can. It’s the least Pidge can do to thank her.

She throws her backpack over her shoulders and takes slow, controlled strides toward the door. A man (or maybe an older teenager? Yeah, teenager) at the bar glances back as she walks, immediately glancing toward his friend and nudging him with a tilt of his head. The friend glances between her and the tv as his brows raise. _Oh, wow, that was fucking subtle_. A few of the other patrons and staff seem to be making the same connection- or she might just be imagining things. Her brain does like to go into overdrive every time she’s even a little bit stressed.

Yeah, that’s it. Stress. Pidge shoots the hostess a bright smile and wishes her a good day, trying to keep the rising panic out of her voice as she slips out the front door toward the road. The mild drizzle of rain from earlier doesn’t seem to have stopped at all during the three hours she killed at the booth, and the constant layer of grey is making it look far later in the evening than she knows it is.

She wonders if she can sprint on her ankle. It’s not hurting too bad, though she’s pretty sure she just guaranteed it’s about to. The universe seems to love screwing her over lately.

The hair on the back of her neck raises and she gets the distinct feeling she’s being watched. It takes all of her self-control not to glance over her shoulder to confirm what she already knows in her churning gut.

**_Take shortcut through forest, behind building. Breathe slow, cub. Mind your hurts. All will be fine._ **

Pidge nods and jogs toward the foliage, keeping both hands in a death grip around the straps of her backpack. She just makes it to the treeline when she hears a voice ring out behind her.

Not again…

She tries to keep a steady pace, following her instincts and the confident tone of her Lion as she moves through the forest. Her heart is leaping into her throat with every step and it takes everything in herself not to break out into a dead run.

**_Make hard right._ **

She knows damn well that’s the wrong direction to the motel and she has every intention of telling her Lion just as much but it’s the gruff rumble of the Lion in her brain that tells her to just obey this time and save her sass for later keeps her words to herself.

She turns, the voice (voices?) behind her growing frighteningly close. Pidge curses her short little legs as she jogs faster through the sparse summer brush. The rain starts to pick up again to shift from a mildly irritating drizzle that beads lightly in her hair to a steady shower that slicks her shaggy locks in her face and makes it distressingly hard to see where she’s going. Her lungs start burning and she breaks into a flat sprint, heart pounding a deafening drumbeat in her ears as she twists her way through the underbrush.

**_DOWN._ **

Pidge throws herself into the ground and crosses her hands over her head before the command is even finished. She has to trust Green knows what the hell she’s doing.

A roar echoes in the woods and thunders through her body all the way down to her bones and for a moment Pidge feels like time itself has frozen around her. The rain comes crashing down even harder in the next moment as whatever voices were following her come within what must be sight range. She can feel the dead leaves and the brush on the ground around her shift, like they’re a blanket being pulled over her head to conceal her from prying eyes _holy shit_ -

That has to be Green’s doing, there’s no other explanation for-

The roar comes again and suddenly there’s an earth-shaking crash above her, the rain is being blocked by something _huge_ , and the heavy musk of a wild animal overwhelms her senses as her ears ring in terror and her heart threatens to tear a hole clean through her aching ribcage.

Whatever massive animal is screaming above her is making enough noise that her head is ringing so she can no longer tell which way is up or down. She screws her eyes shut with a terrified squeak. Pidge curls into herself as tightly as she can and waits for the noise to stop, holding her breath and counting the ticks between the echoing bursts of thunder underneath the roaring and the torrential downpour.

She has to trust her Lion.

She has to trust her Lion.

She can’t believe she’s trusting her Lion _what the hell is Green doing_ …

 

Pidge loses track of the ticks between the moment she threw herself to the ground and the moment her Lion gently encourages her to sit up, the soggy foliage falling away from her as she moves. The rain has lightened up again a touch, the drizzle heavy on her body but still light enough to see through.

And her Lion, evidently, has the ability to summon bears.

She knows this because she is currently kneeling eye to eye with a fully grown and nearly four hundred pound black bear.

And said black bear’s two frighteningly adorable young cubs.

**_Not me_** , Green rumbles, mind-voice bright and strong over the heavy weight of the _completely justified_ fear in Pidge’s head. She sounds almost proud. **_Not entirely. Our quintessence overlaps so boundaries between us blur, but as Guardian of Forest, sometimes Forest is Guardian of you._**

“Poetic,” Pidge snarks, leaning back as the scruffy bear cubs crawl into her lap. The mother bear seems not to mind but she’s not sure she should reach out to pet them no matter how cute their little squawks for attention are. The mother bear only pauses to give the sopping wet girl a casual sniff before meandering off toward a nearby bush. “You know, Green, nobody ever mentioned bonding with you would turn me into a Disney princess. I feel like that’s some fine print that should have been highlighted for me before I said yes to all this.”

**_A tragedy. Truly. Heavy is the burden of Forest_** , Green quips dryly. At least _somebody_ finds this funny. Pidge is still waiting for her hands to _stop fucking trembling_.

“Is sass part of your coding too?”

**_Isn’t it obvious?_ **

Pidge snorts. Might as well roll with the punches. That’s all she’s been doing for months, so there’s no reason to quit now. If she can handle everything else that’s come her way she can handle this. She sighs and gently rubs the cubs behind their ears, glancing over to where their mother is grazing on berries every few seconds. She’s not sure what kind of rules she’s operating under right now and she’s not sure she wants to find out.

**_In time you can learn to do on your own. I helped this time. Now go back to room. Animals-_ **

“Bears,” Pidge supplies.

**_Thank. Bear-animals can accompany you._ **

The teenager glances at the rather intimidating adult black bear and decides against it. She doesn’t think she’ll need an escort. It’s not that far a walk.

 

Apparently the Green Lion can override her decisions, because Pidge got an escort anyway.

Pidge did not want an escort. She did not think it was necessary.

_But Pidge got a fucking escort_. The bear strolls beside her like a terrifying four hundred pound dog through the underbrush, allowing the Paladin to put on hand on her back to take the weight off her bad ankle as she limps along. Running on it definitely didn’t help the healing process very much. She feels a bit lightheaded, nauseas too, but she’s not sure if that’s from her ribs, her fall or her fading terror. It’s still a bit hard to feel anything coherent through the fading adrenaline.

The bear stops at the edge of the treeline around the little two-story motel and glances up at the teenager expectantly. Pidge blinks for a moment before gently patting the bear on her blocky head, watching as the animal seems to accept the gesture and turns to wander back into the woods with a soft grunt, her cubs at her heels.

That was going to take a lot of getting used to.

Although the potential it had for pranks could certainly help…

**_NO._ **

With a tired exhale she wanders slowly down the hill, her soggy sneakers slipping on the slick layer of dead leaves every few steps. Her shoes are beyond waterlogged, and she’s convinced her feet are already pruning. She just hopes the stuff in her back isn’t ruined. Rainstorm be damned it’s definitely time to get the hell out of dodge.

As she reaches the overhang dividing the parking lot from the bedroom doors she spots a figure knocking on the door to her rented room and freezes. Her fingers twitch for her bayard instinctively. It takes her a moment to recognize he’s only the man from the front desk, the one who checked her in yesterday.

The front desk with a television in the lobby.

_Goddamn it can she just have five minutes_ …

She pushes her bangs back out of her face with one shaking hand, drawing a painfully deep breath to steady her nerves as she approaches. The man from the front desk is standing between her and the door, key ring in hand and tapping his foot impatiently as he raps his knuckles against the door again. Pidge pauses and clears her throat.

He whips around so fast and wild-eyed she can’t help but let a little bark of laugher slip out.

“Ah, Miss Curie, there you are.” Pidge tries not to roll her eyes. She knows he already saw through that ruse, even before the announcement. He just hadn’t _cared_ until now. “I was about to-”

Pidge shakes her head to interrupt him and gestures with one hand for him to move aside. He doesn’t. If he hasn’t already called the cops he’s certainly about to, and she has no intention of sticking around to see the fruits of her sleep deprived mistakes come in. A breeze rolls over her and she forces herself to keep the shiver out of her voice.

“I’m afraid my friends appear to be _very_ lost, I won’t be leaving like I thought. How much for a second night?”

He gives her a quick calculation and she notes to herself rather dryly how much less it is than her first night.

Probably because he wants to make sure she sticks around long enough for him to collect that reward. It was a pretty generous offer if the Garrison was being sincere. That kind of money could go a long way.

Then again, they aren’t likely to bother paying up to anyone who helps find her, so she figures it hardly matters.

“Well that sounds just great,” she nods, tilting her head toward the door shyly. She shifts her weight from foot to foot in mock distress and puts on her best ‘innocent baby sister’ voice. “I’ll get my wallet out right after I use the bathroom, if you can wait for me juuust a tick please. I think something I ate earlier disagreed with me- must have been that gas station sushi.”

The man jumps out of the way like she had just burned him and Pidge tries very, very, _very_ hard not to break character to roll her eyes. It’s a perfectly normal bodily function, honestly man.

The second the door clicks shut behind her she throws her legs over her quietly hovering speeder. She stuffs her now dry towel shirt on top of the rest of her now moderately wet things before pulling on her jacket, zipping it all the way up to her throat as she steels herself. She can see the man’s silhouette through the curtains, thankfully having moved to stand outside the window. She can also see the light of a phone in his hand and hear the sound of him almost mock-whispering with the person on the other end of the line.

It’s a very good thing she asked for a room on the first floor.

Otherwise this would probably hurt.

She quickly tugs on her helmet and nods to herself as the faceplate extends down to her chin. It’d probably be worse if she left it in the bag this time. It’s not like he’ll see it in a second anyway.

She bites her lips and rockets herself through the door, flying out through the dust and splinters with a shrill whoop before she can question the impulsiveness of her actions.

And before she can be caught.

 

So maybe she was on an impulsive streak today. Yesterday. Today still?

It’s hard to tell what time it is beyond ‘night’. Her dad would have probably called it _o’ dark o’clock_.

So maybe she was being impulsive.

With the ability to dip into the hilly forest and right off the radar of any would-be pursuers she had made a lot of headway, all things considered. She doubted anyone was trying to follow, but it was better safe than sorry. The steady storm had provided her cover from above and the guiding impulses of her Lion had kept her from being anywhere that’d attract too much attention, so as far as she knew local authorities had nothing on her. She did feel bad about that door though.

Now she was holing herself up in a barn she had stumbled across (very nearly _into_ given the darkness and the rain) and bickering quietly with her Lion.

“Did Allura not say that you required a pilot of _daring_?”

There’s no bite to the Lion’s tone as she retorts; **_She also said intellect. Inquisitive, too._**

“Oh I am plenty inquisitive, don’t you start with me,” Pidge laughs as she tucks her alien speeder back behind some hay. The animals in the barn don’t seem to mind her presence, though she isn’t totally sure that’s not just a side effect of her Lion blurring the boundaries between girl and magical machine. “In fact I’m about to inquire my foot right up your ass.”

**_Illogical and impossible. Very nice._** Green chuckles in their shared headspace. **_Perhaps you are better suited to be a Red or Blue Paladin?_**

Pidge sticks out her tongue, knowing damn well her Lion can sense the gesture.

**_Rude cub._ **

“Rude cat.”

Pidge limps around the barn for a minute, getting a quick bearing on her situation. A pair of horses and a small flock of hens seem to be her only company for the night, though she’s sure the house of the people they belong to is very close by. She gives the ruddy colored horse in the stall with the name ‘Twister’ on the door an affectionate scratch on the white patch of its nose as she passes. It nickers softly and rouses the dozing animals for a moment. One or two hens cluck among themselves before settling back down, and the animals turn away to sleep.

She pulls her things out of her bag and hangs her damp clothes out to dry across some low beams and on the rungs of a ladder propped against the wall. She wrings out the black underlayer of her suit with her hands as best she can before tucking it back in her backpack- just to be safe.

She pops her feet out of her shoes and her socks and leaves them on the floor. She’s not really sure what to do with the waterlogged sneakers.

Another quick survey of the barn leads her to a few unused horse blankets which she lays out in the dirt as a makeshift bed.  It’s not ideal, but it works. At this point she’s too exhausted to mind- she’s not sure why she’s so tired though. It can’t have been that long since she left the sports bar.

She wiggles out of her saturated jeans with only a moderate amount of struggle and throws them up to air dry nearby, quickly tucking herself between the layers of thick blankets before her damp skin lets her catch cold. Logically she knows it’s more than that, it’s about the external cooling of the body compromising the integrity of the immune system and making her vulnerable to hostile bacteria and viruses. Less logically, she’s just fucking cold and would really like to not get sick.

The rain outside sounds like it’s finally letting up, the thunder fading with every tick as the downpour softens and dissipates into the wind.

She wonders how much longer it will be until Allura manages to track her down.

It could be any day now.

Any day.

She really needs to get a move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m a tiny bit happier with this than the last chapter, but I’m so focused on all the post-earth stuff I think it’s made it hard for me to look at the stuff here with unjaded eyes.
> 
> And as close as we finally are we might have a tiny bit of a detour on our way to the new Holt residence, I’m afraid. You all have been so patient. It’s just one last detour and then we’re there. Then we have to go all the way back to Arizona! Won’t that be fun? (It will be quicker I promise please don’t burn me at the stake.) I think I might have to tag this as a slow burn though.
> 
> Also I realized after I posted the last chapter that I mentioned Pidge's middle name without showing it, and to that I say; oops. I'm constantly like six chapters ahead mentally, I'm a bit of a scatterbrained mess. Sorry about that.


	8. Undertow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s so easy to slip under the waves, to fall victim to the riptide just beneath the surface.
> 
> And the current is so patient.

Pidge wakes up to something very solid and warm weighing down on her chest, pressing hard against her still tender ribs and making it difficult to breathe. A soft rumbling echoes in her chest, and she hazily assumes it’s from her Lion. She knows she had that dream again. The one she has flashes of every time she closes her eyes now, that nightmare in the darkness. Green purrs in her head almost continuously as if to drown out the last threads of the nightmare. She never mentions it, but Pidge is sure the Lion sees it too. She’s sure Green is the spark that makes the nightmare cease, that keeps it at bay.

But the Lion never says anything, so Pidge doesn’t either.

Her eyes flutter briefly and she greets the morning daylight with a soft hiss before throwing one arm over her eyes, jolting when she receives an equally disdainful hiss from the sunshine in return. Pidge lifts her forearm to find herself face to face with a massive orange cat curled up and dozing comfortably on her chest. It seems not to notice that its human bed is now awake, or at least it doesn’t appear to _care_.

“Uh, morning?” she grunts, blinking as the cat chirps and resettles itself into a more comfortable position on its folded paws. “Green, is this..?”

**_Not my work. Tiny lion did as it wanted._ **

“It’s a cat, big girl.”

**_Tiny cat, then._ **

Pidge coughs, using one hand to push at the heavy feline. She grunts as it settles itself firmly against her and refuses to budge. _The hell does this cat eat_? “I dunno if I’d call it tiny, but ok.”

“Pancake! Here kitty kitty!”

Pidge groans and glares sleepily when the cat gives her a lazy blink. “Let me guess- _you’re_ Pancake?”

Apart from a soft flick of its ear the cat gives no sign it heard her or the voice calling for it. It settles all its weight against her in an aggressive cuddle.

Pidge is suddenly reminded of her brother’s obscenely snuggly bull terrier named Hailey.

And the moment after she remembers Hailey, she remembers _why_ he named her Hailey.

Matt had wanted to call the little puppy ‘Comet Hale-Bopp’, because he was an astronomy nerd born into a family of astronomy nerds. A weird and nerdy name was a necessity. Anything else would have been sacrilege. Their dad had liked the idea, while their mom had suggested just calling her Comet. She wasn’t sure Pidge would be able to pronounce the full name.

She was right.

Very important detail: Pidge was two at the time. Her linguistic skills were… less than optimal.

When she tried to pronounce Comet Hale-Bopp, it sounded exactly like Commie Hail-Poop. For obvious reasons, despite the barely controlled laughter of her brother and the moderately more dignified snickering of her father, her mom somehow managed to convince Matt to name the dog something baby Pidge could actually pronounce.

But until he came up with an appropriate name, Matt kept making his baby sister say Hale-Bopp. And being the kind of clever, loving, _thoughtful_ older brother that he was, Matt got it on video. Most of her embarrassing childhood moments were filmed, actually.

_Including the gummy worm incident_.

(Incidents.)

As far as she knew he never shared any of it with anyone, though he did promise that a compilation video would be the first thing he ever showed to anybody she tried to date. Pidge spent an inordinate amount of her free time in middle school trying to figure out where he hid the damn thing, but she could never find it. It takes a nerd to outthink a nerd, and he had years to prepare for her.

Of course the whole thing might help explain why Pidge didn’t even begin to think about considering dating until Matt was already halfway to Kerberos…

She wonders if he took it with him for safe keeping. She wouldn’t put it past him to sneak something like that on board if it meant keeping it out of her hands.

_Oh shit that might mean_ …

The shameless snickering of her Lion draws her out of her own mind and back into the present. She sticks out her tongue as her Lion tries and fails to settle down, her face burning with embarrassment.

**_Was funny, cub. You can’t blame me._ **

She pushes herself up on her elbows roughly, pleasantly satisfied when the cat growls in surprise and slips off her side to land in the dirt. She pushes herself all the way upright and immediately doubles over on herself so that her forehead is in her lap as a wave of dizziness washes over her. Her entire torso blazes with sharp, stabbing pains as she presses in on herself. With one hand she checks her forehead, hissing softly as her hand finds only blazing heat.

So she ended up getting sick anyway. Shit.

“Oh Pancake there you are!”

Double shit.

Pidge glances up from underneath her bangs to see a scrawny kid with a short halo of hair scoop the tabby into their skinny little arms, hoisting the animal up with only a little strain. She whines involuntarily as nausea bubbles in her throat and the kid whips around to face her with wide eyes. They must not have noticed her before.

A bright blue band-aid stretches over their freckled nose and they blink, big doe eyes wide, unsure what to do as the fat cat squirms lazily in their arms.

“Are you hungry?”

Pidge nearly does a double-take. That was _not_ the reaction she was expecting.

“My gran’pa is making pancakes in the house, he just started when I came looking for this Pancake here, and he always makes too much,” the kid rambles brightly, their crooked smile growing with every word. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you wanted a few. You look hungry.”

She chuckles softly as she sits up. The kids’ reaction was unexpected, but nice.

“I think I’m ok, actually,” she smiles, running one hand through her messy hair. She can’t see it but she knows it must be an absolute disaster- horrendous bedhead was practically a Holt family trait. “I would hate to impose.”

“It’s no trouble at all, gran’pa is always happy to have visitors!”

Pidge can’t even get a word in as the kid skips merrily out through the barn door, the cat yodeling in a rather undignified manner from its position in their arms as they hurry down the short hill. She groans and flops back on the blankets as the last waves of her nausea seem to dissipate, breathing in and out in slow, controlled breaths. Her Lion gently nudges her.

**_All human cubs so excitable?_ **

“More or less.”

**_Be not so concerned, cub. You need to eat. It is fine to accept the kindness of strangers._ **

“You do realize there’s essentially a bounty on my head right now, right girl?” Pidge huffs as she pulls the blanket over her head.

**_There are bounties all over universe for head, yours and mine. What is one more here?_ **

Pidge snorted. _Right_. She had almost forgotten about that.

A chill runs over her spine and she tries to shrug it off as nothing more than the breeze. She was lucky to end up in the distant parts of the mapped cosmos, beyond the reach of the Galra empire, back under the constellations of her home planet. It was astronomically absurd luck that landed her here. The others could not have been so lucky.

The others are likely still in danger.

She rises on shaky legs as a fresh bout of determination blooms in her chest. She’s had her rest, now it’s time to move out.

She needs to be ready when the Castle of Lions finds her again. She doesn’t have time to lay around. She needs to do what she set out to do and be ready to leave the minute she picks up a hailing beacon.

She’s not hungry anyway. She can always just eat later.

 

It’s about noon when she finally stops her speeder again. She feels awful for leaving that kid high and dry, they had looked so excited to see her, but she was on a mission. She needed to do this. She needs to do this, to prove to her mom that she’s still here. She won’t leave the planet until she does.

Maybe she’d stop by again after seeing her mom again?

**_Question, cub._ **

“Yo,” Pidge grunts through another cramp, putting all of her focus on navigating invisibly through increasingly more populated and trafficked spaces. There are rural spaces and forested areas she could hide, and she’s using them to get around, but they’re thinner than she likes. There’s less isolation than there was before; more cars in a distance close enough for her to hear, more shapes moving in the edges of her vision. She’s already become accustomed to moving through more feral terrain. This is unnerving.

**_What is the maximum heat of an industrial human blowtorch?_ **

“Woah woah _woah_ , what the _fuck_ is going on back there?”

**_Nothing of concern, most likely._ **

Pidge forces the speeder to a halt and props herself on her elbows, leaning forward and closing her eyes. Her Lion tries to shrug her off, blocking her out. Whatever is going on in the hangar she doesn’t want her Paladin to see, and not knowing is only unnerving Pidge even more.

**_Is nothing cub._ **

“Like shit, Green. Show me.”

**_Language._ **

“Show. Me.” She grits out, her fists curling tightly as another cramp washes over her. Her nails bite painful crescent moons into the skin of her palms that she only just barely feels past the curling tension in her abdomen.

The Lion relents and ushers her Paladin into her headspace, letting her see through gold-tinged vision. The large blowtorch Green had been referencing sits menacingly on a table near her right paw, a number of other industrial tools she half-recognizes on carts or otherwise large enough to be standing freely around the limb. Pidge knows it’s not actually menacing, it’s an inanimate object, it can’t menace anyone, but when one of the Garrison scientists reaches for it the entire thing takes on a downright threatening air. She has half a mind to start snarling and swiping at them already.

Apparently they’re getting sick of waiting and are going to try cutting her Lion open. Pidge has involuntary flashbacks to her middle school biology class at the thought, the aroma of formaldehyde filling her senses as she suddenly blends the Green Lion with the memory of her assigned frog dissected on the table before her.

How lovely.

“I dunno, girl, how much heat can you handle?”

**_Remember the corrupted crystal incident?_ **

Pidge shudders. Oh, she _remembers_.

“Why?”

**_We were in atmosphere around a yellow star about to go nova. You didn’t break sweat._ **

“So then why did you ask what temperatures a human made blowtorch could reach? You keep calling all our technology primitive anyway.”

**_Wasn’t sure how advanced some technology was. Was concerned might affect my colors._ **

“So it was just your vanity asking?” Pidge laughs, shaking her head wryly as she feels her Lion fidget in embarrassment. “You just didn’t want them to scuff your paint? Nevermind that we’ve been blown out of the sky by Galra rockets before without a scratch- a little blowtorch worried you?”

**_I like being green._ **

“I’m sure you do, big girl.”

**_How are you, cub?_** The Lion changes the subject, slipping easily into her Paladin’s headspace and poking around curiously. As another wave of pain crests in Pidge’s abdomen she starts a low, rumbling purr deep in her chosen’s bones.

“Not good,” the teenager groans. She appreciates the purr, even if it’s not helping anymore. Her legs twitch restlessly around the speeder, tense for reasons she’s not sure she understands yet.

**_Stand maybe?_** The Lion chimes. **_Might help legs._**

She nods, slipping off the hovering machine carefully. Her sneakers hit the ground with a soft thud.

Big mistake.

Pain rockets up through her right side, curling and twisting in her gut as she struggles to breathe. Her legs tremble and give out beneath her and she collapses into the dirt, only barely aware of the throbbing tenderness in her body where she landed on her side.

This is very wrong, very bad.

Very, _very_ bad.

This isn’t _sick_.

“Green,” she rasps, her shaking hands patting at her cheeks and covering her face slowly, “can you show me my scan results from when we landed again?”

**_Of course… Why?_ **

Pidge whimpers as another cramp racks through her. Bile stings in her mouth, in her nose. “I think I forgot something.”

The images flash into her head and she lets her mind-eye wander through the data until she finds it. It wasn’t something she had thought to look for, and it wasn’t something that her Lion would have noticed without having a full frame of reference. She certainly hadn’t thought to mention it.

Damnit.

Damnit.

Damnit damnit _damnit_ …

This is why the Kerberos crew had theirs removed before they ever left Earth as a _precaution_.

Her flesh turns burning hot and painfully tight over her shoulders, over her back as she hunches over on herself and heaves. The acid that belongs in her stomach stings in her throat, her mouth, her nose, and involuntary tears streak down her cheeks as she heaves it out into the dirt. Her fingers dig thick tracts into the soil with every gut-wrenching heave. There is nothing to retch up, she hasn’t eaten, but she just can’t stop herself as each wave crashes over her again and again, forcing her bile out of her body like she’s been poisoned.

“Fucking useless appendix,” she whines out between surges, thinking more than speaking. “You stopped being useful millennia ago why are you still here…”

**_Cub..?_ **

“It’s an evolutionary leftover, not good for much but fucking shit up anymore. Useless organ until it ruptures and kills you.”

**_What can be done?_ **

Pidge flops against the side of her speeder, the cool metal soothing against the burning skin of her face. She nuzzles the machine slowly as she tries to ignore the sting of bile on her tongue.

“Well, I can go to the hospital for emergency surgery, or I can lay here and die, I think.”

**_WHAT-_ **

“I’m not leaving you,” she groans, head throbbing as the Lion teeters on the edge of a full blown panic, pacing frantically in her brain. She _really_ needs to work on her wording. “I won’t leave you, I promise. But this throws a big Dlaarian monkey wrench in our plans. How close am I to Salem?”

**_Cub you need medical care, focus-_ **

“How close, Green?”

**_Not close enough cub._ **

Pidge glowers at the trees and purses her lips. The world around her spins in and out of focus. Her breathing hitches and she slips forward, catching herself on her hands. The forest looks thicker than it was, blurrier, darker; a cold wave washes over the top of her head and slips down her back, bringing only darkness with it.

**_Cu_** -

 

She drifts in darkness, heavy and all-encompassing and pressing in from all sides. Her heart skips a frightened beat as her whole body is jostled. She hisses weakly as a powerful wave of pain pulses out from her right side. It twists like a fork in her flesh, curling tighter, burning hotter. A flash of pressure against the side of her face, gone in a heartbeat.

 

There’s a pressure on her abdomen now, blinding, throbbing pressure pushing down hard against her and she snarls as she tries to squirm away.

 

Noise filters in and out of her head, murmurs and whirrs dancing in the background of her thoughts. A gentle prod this time presses against her temple, warm and… and frightened, and she reaches for it as it slips like sand from her fingers back into the nothingness. She tries to reach for the gentleness but her hands find only cold in the darkness.

 

It’s so hard to think…

 

And she can see faintly in the distance soft flashes of blue and red, gold and violet… A weak breeze tickles over her face, ominous and familiar…

 

And she can hear- she can hear _screaming_ …

 

The images rise, closer, brighter, colors burning in the void _. Oh_ …

 

_No_ …

 

The memories rise around her, and she cannot stop them.

 

“-please-”

“-blood-”

“-help-”

“-alone-”

 

_No, not again_ …

 

_Not again..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing the appendix thing like a month ago I kid you not, two days after I wrote this scene I started getting really sharp pains in the exact same area and I swear I thought the Fanfiction Gods were punishing me for everything I’m putting this girl through. I turned out to be fine, I didn’t even need to go to the hospital, but I admit it did worry me a little. Especially because my mom had her appendix out last year around the same time.
> 
> I ended up changing this chapter and instead of her accepting the breakfast and getting to know the kid and their grandparent I had her run at the last minute- it made it a bit shorter and I realize I’ve kinda been dragging my feet on the entire damn point of this part of the story. It was long and boring and I couldn't justify it to myself so I picked up the pace because I do actually want to get back to the Castle eventually.


	9. Saltwater and Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From within or from without, saltwater corrodes.
> 
> Starlight is only beautiful at a distance; up close it is a threat.
> 
> (I don't know what I was going for here I just like the name 'Saltwater and Starlight'.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's going to be a little change of pace.
> 
> This one's a twofer: A quick look at how Shiro's been handling himself, and then a glance at a day in the life of Mama Holt.

Sand like sugar streaks out beneath the stars on a distant world. It’s smooth and silky as it powders an unconscious figure and works its way into every god forsaken crevice in the iron of an arm. The sand shines gently under the light of a distant moon.

Waves, thick and black as ink rise to meet the beach. Another one washes up and over stationary legs, brushing against the body prone in the sand. Saltwater clings to cloth, pours itself into boots, cold and sharp against wounds old and fresh.

Wind, cold and sharp nipping against exposed skin, prickling and biting at the bare flesh of hollow cheekbones and tousling salt-stiffened hair. It demands to be acknowledged, unconsciousness be damned. Despite the soothing gentleness of this world the midnight wind is bitter.

Shiro rouses slowly to the demands of the cold and the damp.

He rolls his left shoulder back and pushes his elbow into the sand, his hand sliding through the sugary grains as he pushes his way up slowly. His head spins around him and forces him to breathe slowly through his nose, waiting for the spell to pass. The thrumming of his skull fades into background noise and when he opens his eyes again his gaze is drawn to the sky on instinct.

In the star speckled blackness he can just make out the shape of a ruddy, ovular moon, orbiting whatever strange world he’s ended up on now. He doesn’t recognize the shape of it from any of the Altean star-maps he had gone over. The constellations in the sky don’t mark out any patterns he knows.

He doesn’t know where he is.

He moves his right arm-

He moves his right-

He _tries_ to move his right arm.

The shoulder obeys, and where the stub of flesh is buried beneath the metal in the bicep he can feel an obedient twitch, but the artificial arm itself lays prone in the sand like an iron club. His skull begins to throb violently.

Flashes of memory- perhaps it’s memories, perhaps it’s only his wild imagination- fill in the missing space he can’t remember. He wants to believe it’s only his imagination. In his heart he knows they’re memories.

Screaming.

So much screaming. And blood. He remembers he saw blood, somewhere. Not on him, on someone else. There was so much movement he could barely see what was happening at the time, but his brain helpfully slows the hazy images down in hindsight, letting him soak it in. He remembers watching, frozen, unable to help, watching the kids he’d come to know and love like family be thrown violently around in their Lions, thrown into surfaces with such force that when one of them finally _stops_ screaming, he stops thinking.

He remembers being unable to think when everyone was begging for help, for anyone to even hear them over the sounds of their universe being ripped apart.

He doesn’t remember calling out to any of them. He doesn’t remember trying to catch any of them. He doesn’t remember trying.

He only remembers falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling…

Falling until finally the sickly-colored distortion of the wormhole strips away and the Black Lion wings herself violently against a mountain she had never had the chance to avoid. Her side rips open with a horrific shrieking of metal and the wind howls in his brain as it sucks the air right out of his lungs.

He must have blacked out. He doesn’t remember any time between the mountain and the- the-

The-

The…

He remembers floating. He remembers the wind, and he remembers floating.

He remembers seeing the eyes of his Lion, golden and loving, flickering through the darkness as she spits him out and up toward the open air in a desperate bid to protect him. He remembers feeling her love, her fear, his fear… Bubbles rise around him and he watches as the glow leaves her eyes, unable to do anything for her at all as she sinks helpless into the darkness below.

He pulls himself from the water, trembling on his feet, and stumbles away from the shoreline. He doesn’t make it far, but he doesn’t need to.

Just away from the water, and away from the waves.

His skull pounds as exhaustion washes over his muscles. He lets sleep take him the moment his back hits the sand again.

 

Under the morning sunlight the water is more indigo, more purple than black, but in the places where it gets too deep it turns back into the ominous rolling ink that stretches as far as his eyes can see and well beyond the distant horizon. The day comes slowly, the yellow sun of this world taking it’s time as it crawls into the lilac-blue sky.

And the heat of the day turns overbearing almost immediately.

Shiro can’t stand to lay prone in the shade, sticky with sweat, heaving with pain and exhaustion.

Eventually he is driven to his feet and driven back into the water.

It is gentle and cool against his flesh, seeping in to every crevice of his armor and clinging to his skin through his suit. He only dares wade to his shins, below his knees, laying out in the shallows as he lets himself be soaked through. The cool of the water and the rhythm of the waves dull the throbbing in his head that makes it so hard to focus on any one thought.

Basking in the shallows refreshes him even as the growing heat of the day bears down upon him.

 

A distant shape in the black water draws his eye, near the cliffs, and it takes several seconds for him to recognize the magnificent streak of the Black Lion’s silver and red wing rising out up above the water like a slender minaret. He jolts to his feet.

The Black Lion lays prone under the water, her eyes empty of light. Her battle-scarred hull shows a gaping wound on her side that lets the sea fill her completely and little alien fish dart in and out of her battered shell. It’s a miracle she wasn’t completely torn in half.

For a moment his chest twists and he thinks the worst.

How could he not.

She was…

She _is_ …

But the warmth of the Lion in his brain he had come to embrace over the past few months is still there. He can feel her, somewhere in the back of his mind, like she’s sleeping. She’s still beside him, she’s still there in the space beside him, she’s just not awake.

Somehow.

 

Low tide unveils the top half of the Black Lion’s head to open air. Her broad shoulders and one of her wings are completely exposed. Shiro could swim through the shallow part of the bay and touch her if he wanted, maybe even climb up on top of her.

He wants to.

He really does.

He wants to in a way that pulls and curls down in his marrow, in a way that honestly and sincerely pains him.

Maybe touching her will rouse her from her strange, comatose state. She’s in no condition to fly, he would never ask that of her, but at least she’d be able to drag herself out of the sea if she has his strength to draw from. At least then she wouldn’t be filled with alien water and alien fish. He remembers s _omething_ about solar panels, but the stabbing pain in his skull washes the thought away rather aggressively.

He desperately wants to swim to her.

But his metal arm is dead weight beside him. He doesn’t trust it in the water. He doesn’t trust it to not try to drown him.

He doesn’t even know why it’s not working. He knows for a fact that it’s waterproof, and the dirt and sand in the arena was never a problem before.

It was never a problem then- not that he remembers, but he still knows. He knows.

Better safe than sorry.

 

The hunger is too much.

It’s been two days. Alien days. The hours seem longer here. It’s hard to say if it’s the rotations or only the heat. He has no food, no water. The pulsing migraine in his skull refuses to ease its constant assaults and it’s all he can do to walk in a straight line when he paces back and forth across the sugary sand of the bay, striding from end to end of the broad crescent encircling his Lion. The only time he’s stopped pacing was to sleep fitfully in the lean-to shelter he threw together at the edge of the sand during the peak of the day, when it was too hot to move.

He needs to eat.

He needs to find something, anything to eat.

He has to eat something. He doesn’t have a choice. He’s flesh and blood. Food is necessary for his continued survival.

But the thought of leaving his Lion alone terrifies him.

He can’t do anything for her now, he couldn’t protect her from anyone if he tried, but something in his gut refuses to leave her side. He can’t leave her alone.

 

Shiro peers back through the red and gold foliage, the distant wing of his Lion on the lilac-blue horizon marking how far he’s wandered. The sharp streak of metal is hazy in the distance.

He’s wandered far enough.

He doesn’t want to eat anything he finds, but he knows he has no choice. There is no other option on this island- or is it a peninsula? Or maybe something else?

It doesn’t matter. He needs to eat, and there’s no other option. It’s eating alien fruits and _maybe_ dying, or eating nothing and _definitely_ dying.

He learns quickly, through a series of trial and error born out of his desperation.

The hard blue fruits with the prickly pink hairs on their skins are sweet and filled with water; their flesh is disgusting smelling and tangy, but the fluid in their hollow shells is a gift. He gathers as many of them as he can in his good arm and stacks them beside his makeshift shelter in massive piles. Eventually he carries them in the sling he throws together for his metal arm, seeing as the weight of it locked up is straining his shoulder painfully and he needs to support it more often than not.

The tawny pearl-like berries are savory and juicy, their delicate skin dissolving under his saliva almost instantly. They leave a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, but they fill his stomach.

The strange pink and white leaves that he swears look exactly like spinach don’t taste like anything at all, but they fill his stomach all the same. When he lets them sit by the fire and dry out they develop a strong, addictively salty crunch to them that reminds him of potato chips.

He thinks it’s strange.

He thinks it’s been far too long since he’s had any food from Earth.

The black and white speckled alien fish with four eyes and a mouthful of terrifying little dagger teeth are downright delicious, especially when roasted over a small fire. He only catches three of them before the others start to notice their friends going missing and start avoiding the strange new animal wading through the water. They never dart away entirely- just far enough that he can’t spear them with his one good arm. They swim tantalizingly out of reach.

It frustrates him. He tries not to let it, but it frustrates him all the same.

The gold fruits that look unnervingly like apples are not edible. Not at all.

That’s not entirely accurate.

They’re edible in that they _can_ be eaten. Not edible in the sense that they _should_. They’re simply not worth the trouble of eating given how violently ill eating only half of one made Shiro.

And being the scientist that he is at heart, he had to test it a second time several days later to be absolutely sure it wasn’t just an awful coincidence.

It wasn’t.

Of course it wasn’t.

 

The days blur together as he becomes more familiar with the wildlife of this coast- island- world, wherever he is.

Eight-legged horse creatures the size of border collies. Mostly shades of yellow, though some of them are more brown or tan than others.

Good for eating, but hard to catch.

Creatures that resemble three-eyed barn owls with six wings and no feet. Small, cute, and frighteningly abundant during the twilight hours.

Not good for eating, not easy to catch.

A boar-like animal with a solid, bony skull that reminds him of a prehistoric earth fish. Big, ugly, and _mean_. They leave him alone, mostly, but they don’t like being bothered and give chase easily.

He hasn’t caught one yet, but he has wounded one before.

The sickly green blood that oozed from the wound makes him think twice about eating one. All the animals bleed green here, but the boar-like ones have thin, greasy blood that looks almost toxic in color. It doesn’t look remotely appetizing.

But at the same time he knows he probably will still eat one if he gets the chance.

He finds the longer he is alone, the more the days blend together, the more he becomes a stomach with legs. It scares him more than the nightmares, the memories, the flashes of his time in the arena and the warm sprays of blood that always follow…

He is turning into little more than a stomach with legs, and it scares him.

He was a scientist once. A pilot. An astronaut. A Paladin. A hero.

Now he is a _hunger_.

Even a warrior has humanity, and they exist beyond combat. But hunger…

Hunger is vicious.

Hunger is all-consuming.

Hunger leaves no room for anything else.

 

Hunger is desperation.

He is always hungry, always scavenging. When he is not sleeping or waiting the heat of the day out he his scrounging through the tropical underbrush for his next meal. Hunger is always gnawing at his belly, making his persistent migraine worse with every twist and rumble.

Desperation leads him to turning on one of the boar-like animals with the solid skulls. Desperation leads him to making a mistake.

He is faster than the beast, thankfully, but only barely. And it is more accustomed to the terrain- it doesn’t trip over the roots that catch on his feet and slow him down.

The wounded animal chases him until he manages to clamber up into a low tree branch, the weight of his useless arm threatening to pull him down entirely as he struggles up the trunk.

The furious creature doesn’t loiter long.

In fact, it doesn’t wait at all. The moment he is out of reach and away from its wrath the bleeding beast turns tail and darts off into the forest. Or, it runs. It has no tail to turn.

If Shiro hadn’t been so consumed by his hunger, he would have asked _why_.

He doesn’t need to once he climbs down from the relative safety of the tree.

It’s easily the size of a jaguar, whatever it is.

It’s big, with wide, horrific looking eyes and black and gold stripes streaking over its flesh like the markings on a hornet.

A hornet. The comparison is certainly accurate.

It looks like a massive, hideous hornet.

It looks like the nightmare lovechild of a hornet and a Hollywood velociraptor, and it chitters threateningly at him, placing one foot in front of the other in a slow, obvious warning display.

He gets the distinct feeling he just trespassed onto a nest.

But he doesn’t bother checking.

He just runs.

He spends most of his time by the shore again, where most of the animals decide not to wander. He doesn’t want to stumble into another predator’s nest. He’s not sure they’d back off so easily the next time.

 

That strange animal in the ocean is back again.

He saw it once before, on maybe the third day. Or the fourth. He can’t remember for sure. He doesn’t know what day it is now.

He remembers standing on top of the cliff above the Black Lion, watching the waves in the bay roll over her as the tide rose, and he remembers a hazy white shape swimming in the distance at the opening to the bay.

It never got close enough for him to gauge its size, but he figured it must have been big.

It’s back now, and as it gets closer Shiro notes that it swims in a way unlike the other animals he’s seen here.

It moves like a shark.

And whatever it is, it’s huge. It swims languidly through the bay in a distant shimmer of white, leaving ripples on the surface wherever it goes. It’s not until it swims closer to the Black Lion that Shiro realizes _just_ how big it is.

From what he can see of it, it’s easily the entire length of her torso.

Cold horror washes over him as the animal swims right up to the Black Lion, reaching out to touch her side with something that looks unnervingly like a humanoid arm. It seems to feel her out, feel for her size, and it’s all Shiro can do not to scream when it swims into her gaping wound like an opportunistic parasite.

It stays inside of her until the sun slips from the sky and beyond the horizon.

 

He starts seeing the Black Lion in his dreams after that.

She comforts him, like a warm summer breeze washing over his skin, purring quietly to chase the nightmares away. It helps.

She always seems so tired though. Like spending the night with him drains her energy. She never stays long, she never seems to have the strength to stay with him.

That’s all it takes to convince him that he has to try to get her out of the water.

He owes it to her to try and get her out of the water.

He just has to figure out how to account for his damn useless arm first.

 

 

 

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Rebecca Selina Holt has been many things in life.

But more than anything it seems that she is a vector for tragedy. She is a lightning rod for disaster. There is something marked deep within her soul that draws tragedy to her and to everyone she loves.

Because everything and everyone that she holds dear, she loses. And she loses them in the most spectacular ways.

In motorcycle accidents, wrapped around trees on stormy nights.

By cabin depressurization, above the surface of Europa and within the pull of Jupiter.

Pure human error, all the way on Kerberos at the fringes of the solar system.

And now, a midnight runaway she knows would never come to pass.

Her daughter Katie was many, many things.

Defiant. Stubborn. Proud. Fearless.

She was her mother’s daughter to the core.

But the one thing she was not, and would never be, was a runaway. Katherine Valentina Holt was a little hellcat who had to be pried bodily from her prey, whose body and mind locked around her focus with an iron death-grip that even crowbars struggled against. _She did not let things go_. She did not abandon anything until she had torn it apart and guaranteed she had from it all that she wanted and everything she hadn’t known she had wanted.

Katherine Valentina Holt was a fucking hellcat, and no amount of platitudes from dangerously powerful people could convince Rebecca otherwise.

If she left she didn’t leave of her own volition. Given where she was and why, that she had been taken away at all is rather impressive.

Katie may be little, but she is vicious. She has never in her life fought fair.

There’s something Rebecca’s not being told. And given that there are things _she’s_ not telling, she supposes in a fucked up way that it’s almost fair.

 _Almost_.

 

Because of the nature of her losses Rebecca Holt has a pretty little nest egg. Something plush and comfortable and _placating_.

She despises it.

She doesn’t need to work anymore, she hasn’t had to since long before her daughter was born, but she stubbornly does anyway. She fills the days as a substitute teacher; it’s thankless, and work is sporadic, but it’s something. It gets her out of the house and it gives her an excuse when she needs to stay in bed on the weekends. It’s something, and that’s all that matters.

Today she’s filling in for an English teacher who will be out until the end of next week. Thankfully he left lesson plans; more often than she would like she’s had teachers leave nothing, or leave indecipherable notes and students who are more than happy to have a free day. Not that she blames them. She remembers being a teenager, she remembers.

She takes extra care to make sure the dog is comfortable before she leaves the house, laying down some extra cushion on the dog bed; Hailey is getting old, and it’s starting to show. Even though she’s always been a pale dog she’s grayer in the face now, and her joints are stiffer than they used to be. Rebecca can empathize, and she does what she can to make her comfortable.

Rebecca tries not to think about it too much though. She just tries to make sure her son’s dog is well cared for.

She stubbornly refuses to call Hailey her dog. Hailey is Matt’s.

 _She’s Matt’s, damnit_.

 

Nathaniel is always so nice. He’s such a chipper kid; he reminds Rebecca of Matt sometimes, and she usually allows herself a few minutes to chat with him whenever she picks up her medication and he’s at the counter. She can’t today unfortunately- she has to teach at a high school in twenty minutes. He always has some awful joke to share with her, and even though it hurts to be reminded of her son she’ll be damned if she foregoes the chance to see someone like him.

Granted, the boy looks _nothing_ like her son.

He looks like her son’s type, sure, but nothing like her son.

But he sounds like him when he laughs, and that’s enough.

He was one of her students a few years ago when she substituted for a biology teacher, and evidently he remembered her.

It’s nice to be remembered; a strange thing, considering how much she’s tried to be forgotten.

 

There’s always one student that she swears recognizes her.

There’s always one pair of eyes that hone in on her and just _watch_ , staring in a way that makes her believe they’re aware of what she’s tried so hard to put behind her.

She shouldn’t be surprised.

It was a big deal, and records of it abound. Most people don’t know, especially those who didn’t know her when she was younger, but sometimes someone will see the documentaries…

If a student ever does recognize her, they rarely say anything. They’re usually the shy, quiet kids in the back of the pack just trying to blend in, and she can count on one hand the number of times a pre-teen or teenager has ever asked her if she’s ‘ _That_  Holt’.

She’s always honest if they pry, but usually she gives them a tired smile and a motherly, “What do _you_ think?”, watching as they sometimes wonder if they got it wrong. It's always interesting when they reconsider any theories they might have had about her identity.

Even though the proof is quite literally marked upon her skin.

But then again, the rumors about that were never confirmed one way or the other, and it's not like she wanders around in crop tops.

This one watches with big cat-green eyes for the entire hour, quiet and curious, and when she walks out of the room at the end of the class period she hesitates by the desk. Rebecca waits for a question that never comes as the teenager decides better of it and keeps walking, shoulders hunched slightly to support the weight of her backpack.

 

She doesn’t know why she keeps going to therapy, honestly.

She doesn’t get anything out of it.

Doctor Singh is a nice man, and he clearly knows what he’s talking about, but Rebecca doesn’t know why she keeps coming back.

He helped her through the fog after…

After Hecate I. After the first Hecate mission, the first Hecate nightmare. He was who she turned to for a time when her family couldn’t support her, and when she was afraid of leaning on them no matter how much they asked her to. It was unfair to ask them to shoulder her.

And years later she turned to him again after Hecate VI, when she lost her husband and her son. Until she had uprooted herself it had been video calls, and due to the connections that she had as a result of her ties with NASA it was safe to say he was paid handsomely for his efforts.

But losing her daughter just doesn’t sit the way everything else has. Something about it is painfully different.

And going to a man trying to help her through her grief and to _accept it_ isn’t what she wants.

She understands what her daughter wanted, why she did what she did.

She wants answers.

 

Rebecca had a dream, once, of a pride of lions out in the desert. There was nothing grand or special about them, nothing particularly noteworthy, nothing that marked them as anything other than your standard large African cats, but she felt something about them all the same.

They were stargazing, or at least they looked to be, and there was a heat in the air over their skin that suggested that these grand beasts now lying in elegant repose had only just moments before been struggling for their very survival. Their strange calm was infectious, and anything she might have felt faded as she knelt in the hard earth beyond their gaze. She didn’t know how long she watched them for. Time in a dream was always fuzzy, indistinct, but it felt like hours.

Apart from the steady breathing slowly expanding and contracting their chests they never moved, so singular in their focus on the midnight sky they appeared more a collection of tawny statues than beasts of flesh and blood.

Rebecca didn’t recognize the constellations that held them so, but the desert was familiar enough. She had seen it when she drove out to the Galaxy Garrison for answers about her daughter’s disappearance. The last horizon her daughter had ever seen, a place known intimately to all the lost members of her family, had burned itself a brand into her memory, and it haunted her behind closed eyes. She sometimes wondered if it haunted her because her family couldn’t.

She may have known the place first, but they knew it far better.

One lioness turned her head away from the star-speckled sky to meet her eyes just before Rebecca found herself torn from her sleep and she could have sworn it had the eyes of her darling pigeon for just the briefest of moments. All of its wisdom, its curiosity, its energy morphed into something younger and brighter that Rebecca knew before blinking away into a steady feline stare that demanded she _wake_.

The lioness’s gentle visage stayed in her mind for weeks.

Her therapist had plenty of theories as to what that dream meant.

_The desert represented her loneliness, her losses, the feeling she had been left behind by her family._

_The lion pride represented her ability to overcome, and her need to control._

_The one lioness in particular was supposed to represent hope._

_The strange night sky was the unknown future ahead._

Rebecca didn’t say it to his face, much though it pained her, but she found every word of that to be utter bullshit. She supposed she was where her daughter had gotten that deep streak of attitude from, really.

Rebecca imagined, briefly, that it was a message from her daughter, flung deep into the distant beyond, before laughing the idea away through tears and simply accepting it as a dream- nothing more and nothing less.

She hasn’t dreamed like that since, even though she’s tried.

He asks her about her dreams again today.

He asks about her medication even though it’s for seizures and not really in his scope of practice, about physical therapy, about her plans for the future.

She’s honest.

“It’s fine.”

“Haven’t needed it in years.”

“Still working on it.”

Her honesty is not exactly what he wants, but it’s what he gets.

 

She rarely cooks in her new kitchen.

Cooking was never her thing anyway. That’s not to say she wasn’t good at it, it was just simply something she didn’t enjoy any more than any other chore. She only did it because she had to. Her son loved to cook though, and he more or less ruled the kitchen whenever he was home from the age of eight on.

Part of her used to wonder if it was because of the accident.

She figures that had to have been part of it.

Watching your own mother still barely able to walk on her own two feet stand at the stove could not have been an easy experience for someone as tenderhearted as the little ray of sunshine she called Matt.

Given how Sam was prone to burning pretty much everything he ever cooked (seriously, how that man had even the slightest proficiency in chemistry still baffles Rebecca _to this day_ ) it was either take out or let Matt give it a go. She had long since banned her husband from cooking for everyone’s safety. Her in-laws had even backed her up on it, and after the _third_  kitchen fire the fire department where they used to live when Matt was young had even gotten it in writing.

Thankfully Matt knew what he was doing.

Rebecca finds she doesn’t usually have the energy to cook though. There’s not much point in making fancy meals for one when the Thai place down the street delivers and she lives within walking distance of two decent chain restaurants.

She has a bowl of steaming chicken curry in her lap as she curls up on the couch, flipping through the channels as Hailey snuggles into a little ball at her feet. She uses her feet to adjust the blanket over both of them, freezing when she hears the announcer on the television set say _that_ word. Her blood turns suddenly to ice in her veins as she wills every intrusive thought back into the box from which it sprang, beating them mercilessly when they refuse.

She stopped her lazy channel surfing on a history channel, during their block about modern space exploration.

About the Hecate mission series.

Specifically Hecate I.

Her curry goes cold long before she remembers to breathe. Long before she figures out how to change the channel again. The images on screen don’t exactly help.

The videos, the photos…

 _The motherfucking dramatic reenactments_.

The rage in her veins is boiling because those actresses playing the astronauts are not at all accurate, the voices are wrong ( _that is not how Katya sounded, her voice was deeper, more sarcastic_ ), the faces are wrong ( _that is not how Felicitie looked at all, and she wore her hair in twists not microbraids_ ), and for fuck’s sake did they do any research on Charlotte _at_ _all_ ; honestly, she would know-

She _does_ know.

And she wishes she didn’t.

The Hecate mission series were disasters, all of them. If there weren’t numerous disasters before launch there were disasters in space, and often there were both. In all but one Hecate mission at least one person died. That’s why they retired the name after the sixth; scientists or not, when something _seems_ cursed, you eventually back the fuck off.

She just wishes they had retired it before the name Holt was put out on one.

But life is what it is. If nothing else, Rebecca has come to accept that. She can't change the past.

She’s surprised when they mention her by name.

And not as a wife and a mother, who lost family on Hecate VI…

Given how hard she’s distanced herself she’s a little surprised.

She doesn’t bother eating before shuffling off to bed, the television still blaring softly, mockingly in the background.

 

She holds Hailey close as she sleeps.

She clings desperately to the last warm thing in her life, the last living member of her family, holding on to the only thing that keeps the nightmares at bay.

She still dreams though.

She dreams of a lioness, again, or she thinks she does.

She can’t see it but she can feel it following her, watching her every move as she walks across an icy surface, the wind and snow unfelt against her skin even as it swirls around her. It takes her a long time to recognize the hazy surface of Jupiter on the horizon and she has to laugh.

Only in her dreams does she walk on Europa.

Only in her dreams can she walk on the frozen moon of Jupiter, stalked by a lioness she cannot see.

She’s not the same lioness as before.

Rebecca doesn’t know how she knows that.

Eventually the lioness manifests in the ice before her and Rebecca is blown away by the size of the thing, by the cold golden eyes and the silky fur that glimmers under the starlight. The beast is more mist than flesh, but if she reached out now she’s sure she’d feel _something_ under her fingers. Something... powerful.

She’s definitely not the same lioness from before.

The creature bows its great head and rumbles low in its chest as the snow flurries and the wind blow harder, and Rebecca sees _apology_ in the animal’s eyes.

She can’t imagine why it would apologize.

It fades slowly, for what Rebecca realizes will be the last time, and it’s only as the strange animal fades into the darkness that she reaches out for it, that she starts asking questions. But the animal is gone in a sweep of starlight and she is left standing in the cosmic tundra with only questions and only fear as the ice and snow congeals into a cavern around her.

She wakes up crying for reasons she doesn’t understand.

 

For the first time in years she answers the phone when an old friend calls, murmuring things about fields of fire and wild-eyed lions in the middle of the night and apologizing for things that aren’t her fault, things that happened so long ago.

Rebecca Selina Holt has been many things in life.

But more than anything she is a vector for tragedy. She is a lightning rod for disaster.

Her losses are spectacular. Her losses become national news, international news. Her losses wind up being written into the history books for the consumption of future generations.

And somehow she feels, for the first time in her life, that her greatest loss happened even before Hecate I was set to launch, and it went so quietly she never even realized it had happened at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think a lifetime of characters’ moms being utterly devoid of development has made me a bitter fan and a better writer. And given that there’s nothing at all for Mama Holt, I can make her whatever I want.
> 
> So I made her tragic because breaking characters in half over my leg like I'm Bane is apparently my bread and butter. Her backstory has honestly gotten away from me and I might one day turn the basic of it into a proper book because the entire thing is so interesting to me.
> 
> If you have any questions at all by all means I would love to answer them, this is a chapter I wrote pretty recently to replace a nearly completed chapter I didn't like at all so I don't think it has quite the same depth as my other chapters. If I wasn't clear enough about anything please ask. 
> 
> Oh, and the prehistoric fish I referenced in Shiro's part is a 'dunkleosteus' for the curious. I love those things.
> 
> And I wish I was joking about the fire department getting it in writing for Sam not being allowed to cook, but I swear that's an actual thing that happens. My pediatrician's mother nearly burnt the house down on three separate occasions, and it was eventually written into the lease that she was not allowed to cook in the house because some day someone was going to get seriously hurt. The local fire department also got it in writing.
> 
> There won't be an update tomorrow due to the election, and I think Wednesday will be my last update before my jury summons and whatever that may lead to. Hopefully. The next chapter is still pretty rough around the edges but I'll see what I can do.
> 
>  
> 
> My cat got startled by something and tackled me as I was working on the notes here and I feel like I owe everyone some advice- do not teach your kittens to ride on your shoulders like parrots. Do not do it. It's only cute when they're tiny. They will grow up into big cats and will tackle you out of nowhere, taking five or six years off your life in the process. Do not do it. Do not make my mistakes.


	10. Not A Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not a child- I’m a Paladin of Voltron.”
> 
> But the two are not mutually exclusive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anybody who saw my tumblr you already know why I didn’t update on Wednesday, and for anyone who hasn’t I’m sure you can guess. It was just a lot of protracted internal shrieking and outward sobbing. Still doing that, actually, but hey who isn’t these days.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy this new chapter:

Pidge rouses to the sound of raindrops pattering against a window. Her head spins through a dizzying fog, exhaustion and nausea fighting for dominance as she struggles to get her bearings. There’s a sudden swell of terrified noise as the Green Lion senses her presence and the rushing thrum in her brain forces her into a painfully sharp state of _awake_.

 ** _Cub, I tried to reach you, I tried-_** the Lion hoarsely murmurs, wrapping herself roughly and tenderly around her Paladin’s mind like a warm blanket and engulfing her with raw emotion. Pidge melts into the embrace. **_I am so sorry cub... Something blocked my connection to you, I didn’t know what to do. I am sorry. I saw. It was only a dream, cub, only a nightmare..._**

“S’ok, girl,” she whispers, voice grating and dry. She feels like she’s speaking through a mouthful of cotton. Her left hand twitches with the desire to pet her Lion in comfort. An absurd thought given the sheer size of the mechanical cat, but at this point absurdity clearly rules her life. “M’ok now. M’here.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” an unfamiliar voice rings out. Pidge nearly jolts out of her skin.

Pidge peels her eyes open carefully, grimacing as bright, ugly florescent light greets her.

Two uniformed police officers are sitting in chairs at the foot of what she recognizes as her hospital bed, tired expressions mirrored on their faces as they observe her. The woman stays in her chair as the other, clearly younger officer rises to greet the Paladin.

“I’m Officer Lambert,” he inclines his head slightly before gesturing to his partner, “and this is Officer Ramirez. You’re in the hospital- you just had an emergency appendectomy.”

Pidge moves her right hand to greet them on instinct and freezes when it’s jolted back.

“Ah- You’re not under arrest, ma’am.”

“Really? Then what the _fuck_ is this?” Pidge hisses out, yanking her wrist as high as it will go to show off the shiny new jewelry and violently clanging metal against metal, the skin of her wrist stinging as the metal bites into it with every rough tug. The sudden rush of panic and fury gives her a burst of combative energy. “I just woke up from surgery _what the fuck is this_?”

“A precaution,” Ramirez says from her seat, typing something quietly on a small computer. “As a known runaway you are a flight risk, Miss Holt. Post-surgery or no.”

 _A known runaway_?

The teenager narrows her eyes. The nervous caution broiling in from her Lion keeps her lips pressed together in a firm, tense line and any more attitude she might have safely behind them. Lambert half-steps away from her venomous stare.

She didn’t exactly _mean_ to leave the damn planet.

“Until you can be transferred to an ‘appropriate facility’, _whatever that means_ , there will be rotating shifts of officers keeping an eye on you while you recover.” The woman eyes her curiously, shaking her head before returning to her work. “I don’t know who exactly you pissed off or what exactly you did, Miss Holt, but I’m impressed. Not many teenagers warrant this kind of attention. Especially not someone as young as you.”

Pidge sinks back into the pillows and quietly gnaws on her lower lip.

It takes every ounce of self-control she has not to reach over and immediately start picking at the IV in her left hand.

Ramirez finishes whatever she was working on and shuts the computer, leaving it on her seat as she walks over to the right side of the bed with ramrod-straight posture. She clasps her hands firmly behind her back as Lambert whips out a small pad and a pen.

“Do you know where you are, Miss Holt?”

Pidge takes a slow look around the room, dramatically furrowing her brows and pursing her lips as she makes a show of thinking before her face lights up in mock revelation.

“ _A candy store_?”

Ok, so that came out a bit more sarcastic than she intended, which is really saying something. So sue her. Post-surgical drugs or not her default state of being is ‘sassy’ with little to no regard as to who is on the receiving end of her attitude- case in point, the food fight she incited with a goddamn Princess.

“Miss Holt please.”

“A hospital,” Pidge rolls her eyes and shrugs. “I assume somewhere on Earth.”

That gets the officer to cock one carefully sculpted brow for a moment.

“Do you know what happened to you?”

“I passed out?” Pidge shrugs again, uncomfortable under the heavy cotton of her hospital gown. “I remember puking and collapsing, and you said I had an appendectomy so I think it’s safe to assume my appendix went _boom_.” She makes a small explosion with her fingers with that last word, popping the ‘b’ as she says it.

“In perhaps more blunt terminology, yes. You were found unconscious in the state park outside of Douglas yesterday afternoon. The report says that a couple’s dog found you when it ran off leash and they called for an ambulance. You’re in a hospital in Worcester now.”

She knows exactly where she is.

She’s close.

She’s so damn _close_.

“Do you know where you’ve been all this time?”

Of course she does.

Space. She’s been in space, farther than any human has ever been from home, kicking ass and taking names and building up her own personal hitlist for the universes’ most wanted.

Pidge shrugs.

“Miss Holt you’ve been missing for five months. We understand that you’ve just had surgery, but we need to ask where you’ve been in that time. This information could be very important.”

“Out?”

The officer gives the Paladin a sincerely and exceptionally _flat_ look.

“About?”

The look doesn’t get any better.

“Out and about?”

“That is hardly a good answer Miss Holt.”

“You asked a question, I answered a question.”

And then like a screeching car on a quiet back road, it hits her.

“Wait wait wait- five months? _Five months_?”

The officer nods.

“What day is it?”

Lambert pipes up from beside his partner, reaching for the clipboard at the foot of the bed. “Today is June…” he hesitates, blinking. “Oh, well… Happy birthday.”

And then Pidge just… goes blank. The world keeps moving and talking around her, nothing stops, nothing’s different, but she stops registering any of it. One coherent thought surfaces in the grey puddle that the young teenager’s mind has melted into.

 _Fuuuuuuck_.

Just then the door swings open and jolts her halfway back into reality.

“Oh good, you’re awake!”

At least it’s not just Pidge who startles at the chipper tone; Ramirez doesn’t react outwardly, maintaining the kind of chilly poker face Pidge strives to cultivate for herself someday, but Lambert definitely jumps as a stout nurse with salt and pepper hair wheels a cart into the room. The officers move out of her way to stand on the other side of the bed beside the window.

The woman immediately sets to work checking over the teenager, inspecting the bag of IV fluids and then the girl’s ankles, nodding when she finds no swelling. Her voice is surprisingly loud for her small frame as she asks permission to hook up the EKG’s to the sticker patches on her chest; just for a few minutes, get your vitals, shouldn’t be too long yet.

Pidge nods mutely in response to the chatter and questions, still not totally back in her own head.

“Miss Holt, if you can’t tell us where you’ve been can you at least tell us what happened to you?”

 _What happened to her_?

She turns her head to the voice and her brows quirk together in confusion.

Her head whips back around as the nurse rests one hand on her wrist gently; Head Nurse Hart, Pidge notices as the nametag flashes in the light.

“You’re in a bit of a state, dear. You’ve got several fractured and bruised ribs, you’re covered head to toe in truly _severe_ bruising, your ankle has only just healed from a nasty sprain, and you have a large number of healed lacerations and burns on your arms that, given the apparent ages of the scars and your medical history, should not be there. And that’s not even touching on your appendix. For a kid who only ran away five months ago, you look like you’ve been through quite a lot.”

 

“From the look of it your appendix had been swollen for several weeks and was bound to go any day; whatever gave you that bruising and those busted ribs quite likely caused the perforations that led to its eventual rupturing. I’m surprised you didn’t notice it sooner, really, it was in awful shape-”

Pidge still isn’t quite listening as the nurse talks, still grappling with the weight of her revelation. Green is completely baffled and paces restlessly in the back of her Paladin’s brain as the unresponsive teenager struggles to focus.

It’s her birthday.

That means she’s missed Matt’s birthday. Her mom’s birthday. Her dad’s is in a few months.

Holy shit she’s fifteen now.

She’s _fifteen_.

When did that happen.

She doesn’t _feel_ fifteen.

“-And there are clearly old electrocution scars on your right arm that weren’t there during your last physical; not even electrocution scars, but _lightning strike scars_.”

“Wait really?” Lambert perks, leaning over and tilting his head slightly. Ramirez gives him a truly withering stare.

Pidge looks at her own arm, curious as to what the hell the nurse is talking about. She turns her wrist around in the handcuff, taking in the faded now-yellow bruising that concealed so much of her skin until now and blinking as she recognizes Lichtenburg marks streaking up in faded pink branches from the back of her hand and tapering out at her elbow.

 _Ah. Right_.

That’s what she _gets_ for stabbing a sci-fi magi-tech power core. Honestly her suit had taken the brunt of it for her, to the point where she really hadn’t even needed a pod afterwards- she had burnt herself worse taking hot trays out of the oven. The skin had been tender for a little while afterwards, sure, and it blistered in little bubbles that followed the lines along her hand and wrist, but she was still in fighting shape. Whatever Alteans used for armor did not fuck around.

A flutter of pride that’s not her own fills her chest and she smiles wryly as Green purrs in her head.

“Miss Holt, please,” Ramirez asserts, drawing the teenager’s gaze back up. “This is important. What happened to you? What happened to the other teenagers you ran away with?”

There’s a dry snort, followed by an even drier- “ _You don’t have that kind of clearance_.”

Pidge immediately moves to cover her own mouth, surprised at the attitude (only slightly, if she’s being honest) before she realizes it’s not _her_ voice that spouted off like that.

Plus she doesn’t even have a Russian accent and _holy shit is that who she thinks it is_ -

The tall, commanding shape of Commander Katya Petrovna fills the doorway, her arctic blue eyes flashing as she straightens her broad shoulders. Thick heavy bags ring her eyes and her uniform is slightly rumpled, as if it had been donned in a hurry, but she carries an air of command that immediately silences the room; even the Green Lion simmers down in the back of her Paladin’s head at the sound of her voice.

“I thank you for watching over Miss Holt during her recovery,” the woman nods curtly, her cool tone betraying no gratitude, “but your services are no longer required. I will take over from here.”

Ramirez opens her mouth but Petrovna raises one long hand and narrows her eyes dangerously.

“I thank you for watching over Miss Holt, but your services are no longer required. You are relieved. Your commanding officer is waiting for you down the hall.”

The woman settles in a chair opposite the foot of the bed, her spine elegantly straight, and she watches like a hungry lioness in repose as the officers file out of the room. Nurse Hart leaves in a quiet hurry as soon as she’s sure Pidge is comfortable. Pidge can’t blame her- that stare is damn unnerving.

The level stare turns on her and the teenager feels her heart skip a nervous beat. “Do you know who I am?”

 _Does she know who she is_?

 _What kind of a question is that_?

 

Does Pidge know who she is?

Of course she does- the woman is practically a legend with a pulse given her decorated record.

She has no idea why the hell the commander of the first Hecate mission is here, and she has no idea how the hell to even ask that question. She supposes it was really a matter of time before the Garrison sent someone to the hospital (if she couldn’t sneak her way out first of course), but she just cannot figure out for the life of her why they would send someone like Katya Petrovna.

Pidge had learned all about her at the Garrison.

She, along with four other women who had been members of the Garrisons first graduating class, had been part of the first all women crew for a mission past the Asteroid Belt. Her decade-plus experience put her squarely in command of the other women.

She had been one of three survivors of the Europa I disaster- along with the pilot Gyeong, and the communication officer Olivier. The bodies of their fellow astronauts Lauritsen and Hershel were never recovered.

Petrovna had retired from spaceflight after that and she taught college level classes at the Garrison for the older students. Her classes were legendarily brutal and Shiro had joked more than once about having sincere recurring nightmares about her pop quizzes. Pidge herself had personal experience with Olivier’s advanced programming classes and if she was even half as brutal as Petrovna she wouldn’t be surprised if Shiro was being sincere.

Why the hell the woman is here now in Massachusetts Pidge can’t even begin to fathom.

The woman inclines her head slightly, and her voice is much gentler this time.

“Do you know who I am, Katherine?”

Pidge nods mutely.

“Who am I?”

The Paladin squeaks involuntarily on the first word and quietly curses herself; “Commander Katya Petrovna. You teach courses at the Galaxy Garrison academy. History of Spaceflight, mostly.”

The tall woman seems to sag slightly in her seat, as if the answer was not quite what she had been hoping for.

 

Lunch is brought up at noon exactly, and it’s about as appetizing as the girl had expected.

Honestly a tiny part of her had been hoping against all reason for the green Altean food goo. Even Galaxy Garrison food would have been more appealing, and she’s still pissed at them for forever ruining her on her former favorite comfort food with their truly _garbage_ macaroni and cheese. The only palatable things they had ever created were those damn freeze-dried peas. Petrovna excuses herself for a moment and ducks into the bathroom just as a nurse hops into the room.

The nurse who checks on the recovering teenager as she pushes around the food on her plate is painfully chipper, all bubblegum and sunshine and out of reach for anything but some petty flinging of cold peas and carrots on a spoon- which she is only _considering_ , she notes as her Lion warns her to behave. She wouldn’t actually do it.

Probably.

Maybe.

“Oh, there’s a fantastic program on the modern history channel, it’s been on all morning but if you change the channel now you should still be able to catch the-”

The nurse glances between the chart on her computer and Pidge, her eyes suddenly widening dramatically.

“You know I think it actually just ended. I’m sure we can find something else.”

“What just ended?” The nurse whirls around, her eyes so wide Pidge is sincerely worried they’ll roll right out of her head any second now.

“M- _Madam Petrovna_.”

The woman blinks before smiling softly in amusement. “Yes?”

“Nothing,” the nurse squeaks, ducking her head. The Russian woman only shrugs and strides back toward her chair, taking out a sleek smartphone as she settles back in her seat.

“If you insist.”

 

“Katherine, could you please call for a nurse?”

Pidge blinks and tears her eyes away from the television in tired surprise; really, it was amazing she or Green had heard anything at all given how heavily absorbed they had been by the program about a group of kittens growing up in a foster home. She had been watching episodes about kittens and puppies for- _holy shit_ four hours now, her lunch long cold beside her. She blames the painkillers. Whatever they are giving her is _strong_.

She nods and reaches to press one of the buttons on the remote in her lap, growling and switching to her left hand when her right is restrained.

“Ah, yes, completely I forgot,” Petrovna shakes her head and rises, plucking two thin pins from the silver and auburn bun on the nape of her neck. The pins aren’t hairpins, which only raises more questions. She makes frighteningly quick work of the handcuff and sets it on the bedside table to the right of the Paladin. “I’m sure we won’t need that now.”

Even Matt had never worked that fast, and Pidge had seen him pick a lock open like he was just using the key.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine?” She didn’t mean it as a question, but she is really still stuck on her bafflement over the whole lock picking thing right now.

“Are you quite sure?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Head Nurse Hart peers through the door, a curious expression on her face as she steps over the threshold. “You called?”

“I believe Miss Holt is ready to be released, if you could get a Doctor-” she pauses, checking the assigned staff chart written on the whiteboard across the bed, “-Kostopolous to sign off before they leave for the day, I would appreciate it.”

Today is only getting _weirder_ and _weirder_ as it goes on.

The Green Lion asserts when Pidge questions it that the Paladin is, in fact, alive and awake, and that this is not some weird deathbed fever-dream. Pidge still pinches herself anyway.

 

Pidge would be more than happy to blame the medication for the haze she’s in, but honestly after everything she’s been through lately she thinks she’s just numb from exhaustion. She tolerates the invasive prodding as the nurse examines her stitches and makes sure the incision mark is not swollen or discolored before wrapping it back up.

The doctor gives his seal of approval afterward, sending her on her way with a generous prescription of painkillers and a shrug. If Pidge is being honest she’s pretty sure they’re all doing it to get Petrovna to leave; the woman has a resting stare that could freeze lava in its tracks.

She’s wheeled out to the front of the hospital (unnecessarily, she insists, but it is still policy) and Petrovna meets her out front with a sleek black convertible that Pidge has to seriously contain her excitement over riding in. She was never quite the mechanics geek the way Hunk was or the car nerd the way Lance was but she can still appreciate a _fine_ piece of technology when she sees it.

Hell, even if she wanted to run, she wouldn’t know where to go. And she’s still figuring out how to walk again- it takes a few seconds for her feet to recognize the commands from her brain, but once she gets going she can hobble around alright.

It’s not until they reach the first stoplight that the woman says anything again.

“The speeder, where is it?”

Pidge and her Lion devolve into panic quietly, the latter immediately going to triangulate the position of the tech in question as the former scrambles for a lie. Green informs the Paladin that it is still hidden and untouched.

“I’m not going to do anything about it,” Petrovna shrugs and undoes her bun, shaking out the loose curls with one hand, “if it’s anything like what we’re dealing with in Arizona right now there’s no point in me trying to do anything with it. I just want to know if it’s nearby; I have a friend with a trailer, since I doubt you’re in any condition to drive right now.”

“Where are we going?”

The Russian woman smiles warmly, resting one hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “First? Home.”

 

They don’t arrive until late in the evening.

It’s a small apartment on the outer parts of town, three stories and exposed brickwork- her mother had always had a soft spot for brick. Petrovna leads the teenager to the second story, half engaged in whatever she’s texting out on her phone as she climbs the stairs. Green has already confirmed what the woman has said; this is where Pidge’s mom lives now. Pidge just wants to know how the hell Petrovna knows that.

“She’s not home, it seems,” the woman purses her lips as she looks at her phone. The teenager shrugs.

That’s never been a problem for her before.

The front door of the apartment has a keypad, one she recognizes as a six-digit pin, and Pidge immediately starts going through the most likely options.

Her mother’s birthday.

Her father’s birthday.

Her parents’ anniversary.

Matt’s birthday.

Her birthday.

The Kerberos launch.

 _All of them fail_. None of them were the sequence her mother picked.

The announcement of the Kerberos disaster?

Nope.

Shit.

And then a little spark of inspiration hits her.

She enters the date of the night she disappeared.

Never has she wanted to be wrong before.

Never has she been so disappointed to be right.

Guilt settles uncomfortably into her stomach as the light turns green and she pushes the door open.

 

Hailey is happy to see her, boofing and wiggling as if Pidge had never left at all, and the Paladin takes a few seconds to kneel down and hold the happy dog in her arms. Or, she tries. For an old dog Hailey is still damn spry and keeps wiggling her way right out of Pidge’s arms so she can put her paws up on the girl’s chest and lick her face.

Petrovna moves into the kitchen like she belongs there, and Pidge just accepts it at this point. As many questions as she has she doesn’t even know where to start.

The place is sparsely furnished, and even more sparsely decorated.

The only thing that looks at all lived in or on is the small stack of worn photo albums on the coffee table. Everything else almost looks like something out of a magazine for minimalist living.

She wanders over to the couch, dragging Hailey up with her when the old dog whines from the floor.

Pidge runs her hand over the familiar albums, a hobby her mother had always entertained on rainy days, pausing when she comes to a faded blue one with delicate gold trim. She doesn’t remember that one. She glances at the bull terrier who only wags her tail contentedly and the teenager decides to take that as permission, pulling the book into her lap as she settles onto the couch and gently peeling the crinkling cover open. She hears glasses clink on the counter behind her.

The very first image in the book is a glossy full page photo.

Pidge’s brows furrow as she stares at the picture. It’s a picture of a smiling toddler she recognizes as her brother Matt, clinging to a well-loved plush llama with thick baby glasses hanging from his nose, and the woman in the picture holding him in her lap and laughing is definitely her mother. At first glance it looks like a beautiful ordinary day at the beach, if not a beach she recognizes. But, there’s… something is off…

She didn’t know her mom had ever grown out her hair. She’s never seen any pictures of her mother with hair past her ears. But here it billows out over her shoulders in long blonde waves. And… was that little sparkle on the side of her nose from the light, or was that a _nose piercing_?

Sure, plenty of things change over the years, and her parents were only twenty when Matt was born, but…

Her mother is a creature of habit and proud of it. Pidge can’t help the twisting feeling there’s something missing. There’s something she’s not seeing, a puzzle piece she doesn’t know she needs, and she doesn’t have the slightest idea what it could be.

The longer she stares the more it itches at her until she finally realizes what _exactly_ is so wrong with the picture. Not the hair, which is beyond odd. Not the piercing, which, honestly, she’s going to need a lot of answers for.

The color of the dress.

It’s the dress.

More than anything, it’s the sundress.

Her mother _never_ wore yellow. Not even gold jewelry- her wedding ring was a non-traditional titanium and moonstone piece because she refused to wear anything with a yellow color to it.

But here in this photo she’s wearing the brightest, sunniest yellow paisley dress Pidge has ever seen. It’s like a tiny glitch in the Matrix, just something so subtle and somehow so wildly wrong that it makes everything else around it look _broken_. She’s not entirely sure how long she gets lost staring at the image, and it’s not until the dog starts to _boof_ quietly that she realizes she’s been stuck on the first page.

Hailey perks up beside her and it takes a moment for Pidge to hear what the dog hears; a soft, distant beeping, the sound of numbers being punched into a keypad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been an exercise in frustration. Version one was ok. Version two was a disaster, and I couldn’t edit it into something good, so this is version three- an almost complete rewrite. The original was a mess from start to finish. I didn’t plan on introducing some more Hecate information this chapter but honestly once I started the rewrite and thought of a place to introduce someone from the Garrison it all happened pretty organically. Originally it was too independent, I think. Bedsheet rope, hotwiring a police car, all of it felt far too much for someone who needs a damn break and is in no condition to realistically pull off half that shit anyway. So I reworked it all, and I'm ok with how it ended up.
> 
> And on another note Lichtenburg scarring is super cool looking. Seriously though, Pidge stabs a power core and gets shocked clear across the room- she’s gonna get some marks for that one. She’s not coming out totally unscathed.
> 
> And for my personal headcanons regarding birthdays for the Paladins I have-
> 
> Pidge- Gemini, same as Matt. Their birthdays are a week apart. (June 17) (Matt is June 10)  
> Keith- Scorpio. (October 31)  
> Hunk- Leo. (August 11)  
> Shiro- Virgo. (September 5)  
> Lance- Pisces. (March 11)
> 
> So right now Pidge just turned 15, Lance is now 17, Hunk and Keith are still 16 (which Lance will absolutely lord over them like there is no tomorrow), and Shiro is still 25 and thus only like a Class C adult, woefully unprepared for dealing with his four teenagers.
> 
>  
> 
> [CORRECTION: I realize I made some mistakes with ageing given some things I haven’t mentioned yet, so Lance is now 18, Keith is currently 17 and Hunk is presently 16. At the end of the year they will be 18, 18 and 17 respectively. Don’t worry about why. I fucked up, got my timeline a little wonky in my head, it’s not a big deal.]


	11. Relatively Peaceful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little reprieve from all the pain and the running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thing’s first if you’ve had a hard time finding me on tumblr I fixed that, the privacy setting I was using made me hard to track down. You should be able to find me just by looking for ‘calicotomcat’ now. I’m really sorry about that. I am not nearly as tech savvy as my parents think I am. Anyway, now you can go find me and yell at me properly if you feel so inclined.
> 
> I do try to reply to every comment even if it’s just me saying thank you. Sometimes I just have no idea what to say so that’s not me being an ass so much as me just being blank for words.
> 
> And thank you all so much, please enjoy this new chapter.

The door swings open and a painfully familiar voice fills the front hallway of the apartment.

“No, yeah, I know video conferencing with me while we’re out to dinner at separate restaurants is _hardly_ the weirdest thing we’ve ever done, but you have to admit it’s still pretty weird. The waitress looked at me like I had completely lost my damn mind. Yeah, I’ll tell the dog you said hi. Look, Bora, I have to go, I still have laundry from earlier I forgot to do and it’s pretty late over here, I’ll text you when I get up tomorrow ok? Alright, great. Drive safe, Bora. You too.”

Rebecca Holt doesn’t miss a beat as she walks through the door, taking a sip from a proffered glass halfway through her conversation before setting the drink on the counter. She hangs up several seconds later and drops her purse on the floor in the same motion as she rounds on her guest. She props her hands on her hips and angles her face to look up at the taller woman with an unusually amused air.

“Katya, it’s not that I don’t love you, I do, but _why are you in my house_? I thought you were still in Arizona when you called me earlier.”

“I was, yes, but airplanes exist. I had a _special delivery_ I thought I should make in person,” the woman hums with a knowing grin before taking a slow sip from her own glass, glancing over the blonde’s shoulder with a playful quirk of one brow. Rebecca Holt follows the taller woman’s line of sight and turns around with furrowed brows.

Pidge blinks owlishly from the couch, completely out of element watching her mother tease Commander Petrovna of all people like an old friend. Hailey manages to peel away and wiggles over to her other human, licking at the woman’s knee as she stares back at her own daughter with her mouth hanging open in a soft ‘o’.

“ _Pigeon_?”

The scrapbook snaps shut, flung to the side haphazardly as Pidge pulls herself over the back of the couch gracelessly, sliding like a deer on ice as she stumbles across the floor and crashes into her mother’s open arms. The bear hug she receives makes every bone in her body groan in protest but she only squeezes back with as much force as she can manage.

“Oh, Pigeon,” Rebecca sighs, burying her face in her daughter’s hair as Pidge tucks her face into her mother’s shoulder to hide her tears. She takes a hiccupping, shuddering breath. “ _I fucking knew it_.”

The bark of laughter that escapes the Paladin is completely involuntary.

Since when did her mom know how to swear?

“You’ve gotten so big,” Rebecca smiles, eyes sparkling with giddy tears as she pulls back. “Who said you could grow? I don’t remember giving you permission to grow.”

“You said the same thing when I was seven,” Pidge laughs as she shakes her head. “And I told you the same thing I’ll say now- _I do what I want_.”

Rebecca nods. “That’s my girl.”

“Wait, was that supposed to be a test?”

The blonde woman snorts and places a warm kiss on the teenager’s forehead. “Would you have expected anything else from someone who had to deal with you and Matt spouting conspiracy theories all day? Besides, it could have been _much worse_ -”

“No, no no no _, mom no_ ,” Pidge’s eyes grow wide with panic as she glances between her grinning mother and a very bemused looking Katya Petrovna still sipping at her glass in the kitchen behind them.

“-I could have asked you how old you were when you stuck gummy worms in your ears.”

“ _MOTHER_.”

It is admittedly a very good question if Rebecca was worried about the proof of her daughter’s identity. A trick question _and_ a question only the real Katie Holt would know the answer to, since the only appropriate answer to it is ‘ _Which time_?’.

Unfortunately it was a question asked within earshot of a woman who just laughed so hard a mouthful of water just came out of her nose.

Way to go mom.

Rebecca gives a Cheshire grin and gestures to the paper towels across the kitchen, giving her daughter another hard squeeze before pulling back to look at her.

Pidge knows she’s a mess. Her green windbreaker is covering her arms again, and apart from the bandage on her left hand where the IV was Pidge’s full condition is hidden underneath her clothes and not immediately apparent. But she’s a mess, her hair a disastrous bedhead she couldn’t manage to grapple into control in the hospital bathroom, her clothes clean (the clothes she was wearing were cut off to save time for the paramedics and for the doctors, so Petrovna had picked up a full replacement set in her size at some point during the afternoon while she was zonked out and watching tv) but rumpled on her unwashed frame, and she knows she looks sickly pale and exhausted beyond all reason right now.

But Rebecca doesn’t seem to care, taking a long breath through her nose as she wraps her arms over her youngest, gentler this time as she holds her child close.

A deep cough echoes behind them, prying Rebecca away slowly and she turns to face her friend.

“I hate to interrupt, Rebecca,” Katya smiles softly, “but I do need to inform you that this is not just a favor; you are needed in Arizona. Some very important people have a few questions they need you to answer, and they need to talk to you in person.” The woman glances between her friend and the teenager, pursing her lips. “You are both needed.”

“How many strings did you pull for-? What- Why- _How_?” The last question is directed at both Katya and Pidge, weighed down with a hundred other implied questions the woman is clearly still grappling for as it finally sets in. Rebecca glances between them, lower lip pinched by her own teeth as she mulls on her own question.

“I’m afraid your daughter likely knows more than I do, given the circumstances.”

Rebecca rounds back to her child.

“Pigeon?”

“I don’t even know where to start right now mom. I don’t-” she yawns involuntarily, curling into herself as she does so. Rebecca immediately snaps to maternal attention.

“Bed. Now.”

Pidge wants to snap back with some dry retort of her own but she doesn’t have the energy. Instead she just nods and leans her head forward until she’s leaning sleepily into her mother’s collarbone and breathing in her familiar scent. Rebecca hums and gently guides her daughter out of the kitchen and across the apartment to the bedroom. She doesn’t say anything when her child uses the last of her waking energy to slip out of her windbreaker and collapse face-first on the bed, only reaching over to grab the jacket and fold it neatly on the bedside table with shrewd hazel eyes surveying the faded bruising and scarring she knows does not belong.

Rebecca will have many questions waiting when the girl wakes up.

 

“Bora called me in personally, after she finally got some weird answers from the… well, it’s like a giant mechanical cat, really. A lot like the one on the video _that you never saw_ the day after the kids disappeared.”

Rebecca nods and scoops out a second cup of flour into the bowl as Katya cracks an egg into it with practiced ease. She remembers the video she wasn’t technically allowed to see. Or, legally. But with friends in high places who owed her at least that much…

“And?”

“To be completely honest I thought she was off the deep end, even if it sounded plausible, but we started getting sightings when the report for information about Katherine was put out anyway and, well, her instincts have always been pretty damn _good_ …”

The blonde woman finishes the thought out of habit, her voice raw and drifting between amusement and pain. “But not great; not like Charlotte’s.”

“Nobody has instincts like Charlotte.”

Rebecca smiles and reaches for the whisk, her hand unsteady as she shakes her thoughts away.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca. I shouldn’t have…”

“No, no Katya, it’s ok. I’m ok.” The redhead looks away from where she’s leaning on the counter across from her friend, glancing over the instructions in the recipe as if she somehow doesn’t know it by heart already. Rebecca grabs her hands reassuringly. “ _I don’t blame you_. Or Bora, or Felicitie. I don’t know if any of you will ever believe me, but I don’t blame a single one of you for what happened. For anything that happened.”

“You can’t exactly fault Bora for blaming herself though. I mean…”

“No,” the woman sighs quietly, history burning in her eyes as she remembers all the reasons the woman might blame herself for what happened, for anything that happened. “I know I can’t.”

She can’t, because if the roles were reversed she would blame herself too, and nothing anyone could tell her would make her stop. _She would shoulder the burden of that guilt to the grave_.

The redhead makes a grabbing gesture and takes the bowl and whisk from her friend.

“Go, sit with Katherine. I’ve made these enough I can take over from here,” she laughs softly, “and unlike some people I can do it without setting the kitchen on fire.”

“I beg you not to. I don’t think I’d get my deposit back if you did,” Rebecca chuckles and moves toward the bedroom. She hesitates for a moment before catching Katya in a warm hug, pressing her cheek into the taller woman’s chest as Katya rests her chin on her head. A tiny sniffle catches in her throat but neither woman addresses it. Words she never knew she’d say tumble free… “ _Thank you, Commander. Thank you for bringing her home to me…_ ”

Katya screws her eyes shut in horrible, shameful pain and embraces her friend with a shaky breath, placing a familial kiss on the crown of her head. She mumbles gently into the short blonde hair. “It was the least I could do…”

 

When Pidge wakes up the sky is still black.

She rouses to the familiar smell of warm peanut butter cookies in the oven and for a moment she wants to curl into herself with bitter horror; she has come out of far too many dreams on the Castle smelling or feeling or hearing _something_ from home, something simple and average and small and still miserably unattainable, only to be blindsided again and again by the truth as she realized where she was.

Only the gentle, warm hands brushing her shaggy bangs from her face keep her dread and pain at bay.

She’s home.

She’s in her mother’s arms.

This is real.

This is _real_.

“Hey Pigeon,” a warm voice hums above her. “Are you hungry?”

The dozing Paladin’s stomach responds for her with an eager grumble. She grunts to punctuate the statement.

Her mother chuckles and ruffles her messy hair playfully, encouraging her to claw her way out of sleep and back into the world of the waking. Pidge only makes it about halfway upright on her elbows before yawning so hard she slides backwards onto the bed like the pillows are pulling her down by her shirt collar. Rebecca slides one hand under her back and helps the teenager to her feet, guiding her slowly out to the couch long before her eyes open of their own accord.

The dog scrambles up to throw her head in the girl’s lap as a plush blanket is thrown over her, and the dog doesn’t bother moving despite her entire front half being covered by the blanket, content to wag her tail and huff contentedly from her spot underneath the covers.

“Come on Pigeon, rise and shine.”

Pidge responds by leaning sideways with a lazy purr in her thoughts, tilting precariously until she bumps into a shoulder.

An arm wraps over her shoulders and squeezes and she forces herself awake, taking in the softly lit living room with sleep-blurry eyes.

Katya Petrovna is in the chair diagonal to the couch, her feet propped on the glass coffee table as she takes a long sip from a steaming mug. Her jacket is thrown precariously over the side of the chair and the undershirt she wears is snug and black, sleeveless to show off her toned arms and broad shoulders. Her long hair rolls in auburn and silver waves over her shoulders as she shifts to a more comfortable position.

Rebecca is cuddled up next to her child and readjusting the old threadbare quilt in her lap, the quilt Pidge had wondered about, shaking her head as the dog stubbornly lays underneath the blanket. The Paladin blinks sleepily as her eyes lock curiously on the side of her mother’s nose, looking for the dimple of a scar she can’t seem to find. It is possible the sparkle was from sweat, or saltwater, or from a stuck on rhinestone, but she could have sworn that that picture of her mother showed her with a nose piercing, a little crystal stud.

Rebecca gently bumps her forehead into her daughter’s and leans over to pull a plate from the coffee table into her daughter’s hands.

Pidge leans heavily into her mom’s side, the warm purr in her brain growing as she feels, for the first time in a long time, comfortable. Nothing hurts right now. She has no reason to be afraid, or angry; she has no need for walls or for caution. For the first time in a very _, very_ long time she feels completely and totally safe.

She hears a soft hum, a quiet, “Do you hear-?”

A gentle reply; “Yeah…”

“Okay, Pigeon, I love you, but have you been gene splicing?”

 _That_ gets the girl to wake up.

“ _What_?”

Pidge glances between her mother on the couch beside her and Katya sitting on the chair cattycorner to the coffee table, now very awake and very confused.

“Have you been gene splicing?” her mother laughs, “I could swear I just heard you purr.”

Petrovna nods, raising one hand with half a cookie in it; “I’ll vouch for that.”

“How would I even go about gene splicing?” Pidge questions dryly, handling the warm cookie with nervous reverence. Part of her is terrified to bite into it- what if it’s a dream? What if she wakes up? The other part is already chewing, to her surprise, savoring the flavor with almost religious reverence.

A tiny part of her had wondered if she would ever taste these again…

Rebecca shrugs.

“I’m not the one with the alien spacecraft.”

Pidge doubles over in a coughing fit as a mouthful of cookie nearly goes down the wrong pipe. The unusually silent hum of the Green Lion in the back of her head picks up into a nervous fidget, confused, as if she only just now noticed the conversation.

“Easy Pigeon, you’ll pull your stitches,” the blonde woman croons softly, patting her daughter squarely between her shoulder blades. There’s a soft clink of ceramic against glass, followed by the padding of feet and suddenly there’s a glass of water being offered in front of the teenager. Pidge locks eyes with the Russian woman in surprise as she takes it.

She had never met this woman before today, but she could almost swear that she has.

She has to have. She feels so _familiar_.

As if by her unspoken request, Katya’s blue eyes warm and she shakes her head. “The last time I saw you, you must have been only this big,” she gestures, indicating Pidge was around the size of an average toddler.

“Except for her days at the Garrison,” Rebecca hums thoughtfully as she rubs her daughter’s back.

“Ah, true, but she was never in my classes, I only saw her in passing glances.”

Katya moves back to her seat, brushing her hair behind her ears slowly.

“You made it a little difficult to keep people off your scent, my dear.”

Pidge gapes as she recovers her breath. “ _You knew_?”

Katya snickers shamelessly as she sinks into her chair. “Oh Katherine, you would have never made it past the first week without a few friends looking out for you. You have a bad habit of calling attention to yourself when you should be deflecting it.”

 _Revelation after revelation_ …

“Your mother asked I watch out for you. I couldn’t say no.”

 

Rebecca moves the cleared plate back to the table as her daughter leans back into her chest and rests her chin on the crown of the girl’s head as she wraps her arms around her.

Pidge is far more awake now, though she can feel Green resting in the back of her mind, not quite asleep but certainly not that attentive to what’s going on either. She cuts the Lion a little slack and doesn’t prod at her even if the silence is uncomfortable. She just leans back and closes her eyes, embracing the feeling of complete security she’s missed for so long.

“I don’t expect anything from her yet,” Petrovna says as she clears the dishes from the table and carries them to the kitchen. “But I do expect answers eventually. We have questions only she can answer.”

She feels her mother grunt softly in acknowledgement.

“I have to take the flight back out at eight, so I should get going. I will inform my superiors that you will be coming.”

“It will be a few days. We’ll be driving, and stopping by a friend’s when we arrive. Will I see you there?”

“I would expect no less.” Katya embraces Rebecca, bending at the waist to wrap her arms over the smaller woman’s shoulders and sighing deeply as she pulls back with pursed lips. “I will be there if I can. Oh, and Felicitie would like some words with Katherine when you arrive. Something about a program she wrote?”

Pidge flinches and she knows they saw it, even if it goes unaddressed.

Ooooh boy.

They found her virus.

Oh boy.

That’s not going to go over well. Not at all.

“Drive carefully.”

“The same to you,” Petrovna calls from the front hallway. The front door clicks shut a moment later, and Rebecca sighs into her daughter’s hair as she holds her closer. The first rays of morning light trickle through the open window as the teenager shifts and adjusts her blanket. There’s a long moment of silence that stretches between them.

“What happened to your arm?” Rebecca hums, turning the forearm in the light to get a better look at the pink branches trailing over the tender skin.

Pidge grunts and open her eyes, sighing softly, “I’m so used to long sleeves… I forgot all about that scar.”

“How did it happen?”

The long story is that she was essentially reenacting Die Hard with alien invaders and needed to disable the ship’s power core before it could be taken off-world, deciding in a moment of desperation to just stab the damn thing because she couldn’t be sure she’d be able to take it down fast enough in any other way.

The short is that she was playing with things she didn’t understand.

“You don’t have to tell me anything yet, Pigeon. I’m sure you’re still exhausted…”

“How did you know her?”

Pidge can’t help the change in conversation; her curiosity is eating through her exhaustion, driving her mad. _She has to know_.

“Katya is a dear friend of mine. I knew her a long time ago, before you were born, and I owe her a lot.” Rebecca huffs softly. “You’re going to meet a few friends of mine very soon.”

“She said she knew me when I was little-”

“She’s your godmother. And Matt’s.”

It’s so blunt, so to the point Pidge’s eyes snap wide open in surprise.

“I had a falling out with these friends, including Katya, many years ago when you were still a little _squeaky baby pigeon_ ,” her mother hums, tickling her left side gently, aware of the stitches on the opposite side, careful not to disturb the girl too much. She smiles when her efforts draw a frustrated giggle from her child. “It only very recently that we’ve been talking again. But all of that is a story for another day. For now you need to rest. We’ve got a long road trip ahead of us.”

Pidge obeys, deciding to first grab one last nap cuddled up in her mother’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For me I find the most interesting love to read or to write between unrelated characters is platonic love. I can get as shippy as anyone else (and I often do) but there’s something sincerely wonderful about platonic love, and I think a lot of that is because I don’t get to see platonic love in a lot of media. It’s all romance or familial; the closest I think we normally see is like the bonds between male soldiers in media, but it’s usually not called love so much as loyalty or brotherhood. For someone whose most precious relationships were often in the form of platonic love the gap is very strange for me.
> 
> I think the undercurrent of love, in all it's forms, is going to be a big part of this story; both in the backstory I've crafted and in the future chapters to come.
> 
> And I know lions don't actually purr so giving the Paladins that animal trait as a result of their bond with the Lions is inaccurate, but I also don't care. It's adorable.
> 
> Make the Paladins purr.


	12. Insignificant Blue Marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glimpses of moments and days on a third-rate planet in a fifth-rate galaxy, so far away from the rest of the universe most people don't know it exists, and even fewer care.
> 
> But those that do are the ones that matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels a little goofy in some places and it gets a bit domestic in others, and I think at this point Pidge has earned it. Let’s give her a little break. I tried to keep it on the short side because we spent so much time traveling I didn't want to do that all over again on the way back.
> 
> I can’t even begin to explain how happy it makes me that you’re all enjoying this.

Pidge showers until the hot water is long gone, savoring the broiling heat against her skin. She thanks every star in the sky for waterproof bandages.

She dresses herself in the warm, loose clothes her mother set out for her while she was busy wasting the entire building’s hot water supply, purring to herself in quiet contentment when she recognizes her father’s old NASA sweatshirt- it has the same singed hole in elbow of the left sleeve from five years ago when he burnt it making hotdogs. She’s still not sure how he burnt it, exactly, since he was boiling them in beef stock on the stove, but then again her dad had a reputation for burning nigh everything he cooked in ways that sometimes defied scientific reasoning.

She’s _still_ trying to figure out the ice cream incident from when she was seven. That one… that one still doesn’t make any sense.

Green reclines contentedly in her headspace as she burrows her way into the comfy sweats, amused by the quiet rumbling her Paladin is making. She’s not exactly surprised, per say, but she apparently wasn’t expecting it to happen this soon either.

**_Then again, considering bond and Forest power…_ **

Apparently this was _yet another thing_ Pidge had not been told about before signing up. First she was a Disney princess, now she’s apparently part cat too.

She’s starting to wonder if there’s an instruction manual somewhere she can read.

Or at least a contract she can look over.

The sweatpants she was given hang from her narrow hips and she has to cinch the waist aggressively to keep them from sliding off when she walks around. She double-knots the ties to make sure they stay up as she grabs for her towel, the smell of something wonderful sliding under the door as she works at her hair.

As much as she misses her waist-length mane she has to admit, short hair has _serious_ perks. She can towel dry her barely shoulder-length hair in five minutes now and be ready to go. Granted, it looks like she stuck a fork into an electrical socket the way it stands up in all different directions, and she has a monster cowlick at the back of her crown, but at least it’s _dry_. That’s really all she can bother to care about.

When Pidge walks out of the bathroom her mother very nearly chokes on a mouthful of pancake she laughs so hard.

The Paladin just sticks out her tongue and swipes a strip of bacon off her plate as she meanders into the kitchen.

 

Her mom bundles her up in so many blankets and so tightly that Pidge struggles valiantly to pull her arms out of the snug little human burrito wrap her mother has crafted.

Rebecca had a few errands to run and insisted her daughter stay comfortable on the couch at home and rest up for their drive.

After being stuffed like a turkey on pancakes (sweet, fluffy pancakes) she didn’t really have the energy to complain either way.

Hailey is napping curled up into a little ball on the chair Petrovna was in last night, grunting and huffing occasionally in her sleep underneath a blanket Rebecca had tucked around the dog almost as attentively as she had bundled up her daughter.

Pidge nestles back cozily into her blankets after finally freeing her arms, blinking slowly as she watches the sunlight stream in through the window and flickering off against the floating dust particles in the air.

It’s such a small thing, but it’s so pleasant to watch. She continues to be surprised by all the little things she missed about Earth.

Eventually she starts to survey the living room more thoroughly, wondering what happened to so many of their old things. She doubts her mother would have thrown anything out. It’s probably in storage somewhere. Most of the furniture is the same, though the coffee table looks new. The old one probably broke at some point.

She notices the album from last night is gone.

She looks around the room as best she can from her position on the couch, wondering where she could have thrown it in her scrambling hurry, but it appears to have vanished.

The others are still there in the same places as before, but the oldest looking one among them, the leathery blue one with gold trim, is gone.

It makes her suspicious, though she can’t quite imagine _why_.

 

Pidge is jolted awake when Hailey breaks into a joyous greeting howl the minute the front door opens. Even the Green Lion jumps in her brain, and the impact of the feline’s startle leaves a strangely tender spot throbbing on the inside of her head. Her mother kicks the door shut behind her with a bemused roll of her eyes as she shushes the dog.

Rebecca drops a massive box behind the couch with a graceless _thump_.

“It looks like you have grown a bit, but I think your old clothes should still fit you for now.”

Pidge was right, all the stuff was in storage.

She savors the pride of correctness for a moment before trying to stand, accidentally flopping over face-first out on the couch when she remembers she’s bundled so snugly she can’t move her legs.

Being a cozy human burrito has its drawbacks.

 

“I rented a trailer,” Rebecca announces, folding a few more shirts into her suitcase. “Katya mentioned I’d need one.”

“For the hoverbike-speeder thing, yeah,” Pidge hums around a mouthful of ham and cheese sandwich as she watches her mother pack. Warm hazel eyes flicker over to her with a strange expression she can’t quite decipher; not quite disbelief, not quite excitement. Almost understanding, like she knows what to expect. Or at least like she wasn’t completely surprised. Pidge doesn’t know what anyone else knows right now, least of all what her mom might know. After finding out she was old friends with Commander Petrovna (good enough friends that Petrovna was her _godmother_ ) everything is up in the air.

It takes three trips for the two of them to bring all the stuff Rebecca packed down to the car. The suitcases full of clothes are put in the cargo trailer hitched to the back of her mother’s car, while the old orange cooler full of drinks and snacks is tucked up in the space between the front seats and the back in a way that allows the teenager to turn around in her seat to open it up.

Pidge gets the honor of carrying down all the big, flat cushioned dog beds on the fourth trip, while her mother takes the dog.

Rebecca scoops the dog into her arms and cradles her as she descends the stairs, casually waving off the concern in her daughter’s voice as she mentions how little the bull terrier weighs.

“ _Only forty pounds_?” The dog used to weigh an easy fifty on an empty stomach, and she ate like a horse. When you drummed on her side she sounded _solid_ and she could pull on a leash like she was running in the Iditarod, strong enough to yank your arm halfway off if you weren’t ready and braced.

Pidge was nine when she learned the hard way that roller skates and dog walking do not mix.

“On a good day. She _is_ getting old, Pigeon. It’s a bit harder for her to keep the weight on than it used to be.”

“How old is she now?”

Rebecca pauses on the steps, chewing on her lip for a moment as she thinks. The dog just sits contentedly in her arms, limply wagging her tail. “Almost thirteen, in December.”

The dog wiggles with the demand to be let free the moment the blonde’s feet hit the ground floor landing, and Rebecca makes sure she has a good hold on the leash as she lets the dog trot the rest of the way to the car, wiggling and boofing in excitement because she’s wearing her harness and she knows that means _car ride_. She unlocks the door and is barely able to open it before the dog scrambles for it and she has to hold her back until Pidge can get the dog beds arranged on the back seats for her.

“Can you run back in and grab her toy basket? I’ll buckle her in while you’re up.” The teenager nods and whips around without a second thought, taking a shortcut through the lawn back to the apartment.

Pidge freezes the moment her bare feet hit grass, eyes wide in shock.

She flexes her toes, feeling the cool blades curl underneath her, shift between her digits, the soft soil pushing against her skin, and her next breath is taken in a trembling hiccup. She’s not sure if the vibrating purr in her chest is her own or from her Lion but she doesn’t care, closing her eyes as a summer breeze rolls over her face and tousles her shaggy hair.

A tiny, delicate part of her that she refuses to address worries she might never come home again, so she savors everything she can. She grabs everything she can and bottles it up, saving it for later as she forces her feet to move again.

She knows distantly that once she’s away from Earth again it will be the littlest things she’ll miss the most.

She can’t be sure she’ll ever come home.

This _is_ a war she’s fighting in… She has sometimes wondered…

 

They leave at noon.

The pair settle into routine almost immediately; it was as if Pidge had never even left.

It took less than an hour for the first of what would be many, _many_ punchbugs to be spotted and less than a second after that for the first fist to be thrown.

“ _RED ONE_!”

The impact of Pidge’s fist on her mother’s bicep reverberates through the car and in her brain the Green Lion flinches in cold shock. Rebecca stares blankly ahead for several seconds in stunned silence, opening and closing her mouth like a gaping fish as she struggles to gather the words.

“It was right in front of me, _how did I not see it_ …”

“One to zero,” Pidge grins and points between the two of them, glowing and preening with pride. She knows her mother, though; she knows that her victory will be something she earns by the skin of her teeth. If she earns it at all.

In this game there is no mercy.

It’s not like either one of them gets anything out of it. There’s never been a prize at the end of a game. At best there are bragging rights for an afternoon.

It’s purely a matter of pride between two women so aggressively and so violently competitive nobody else dares join in on the ‘fun’ once a game has been declared.

It devolves pretty quickly from there. It’s a good thing the dog is _already_ deaf in one ear.

 

At one point a white punchbug with black front and back bumpers drives by and very nearly incites a riot as Rebecca lands a hit.

“Panda bugs count for two!”

“FUCKING HELL THEY DO!”

Rebecca lets out a deeply scandalized gasp, one hand pressed to her chest in horror.

“KATHERINE VALENTINA HOLT- _LANGUAGE_!”

Pidge rolls her eyes and throws her arms up dramatically- “FUCKING _HECK_ THEY DO!”

“THAT’S _BETTER_!” Rebecca can barely finish the statement before she breaks her composure and laughs. They pull into a parking lot for the state park Pidge was picked up in shortly after, figuring it will be a quick in and out visit.

 

It takes the better part of the afternoon for Pidge to find her speeder again. The Green Lion’s direction giving skills send the poor girl in circles, and with the fact she’s still medicated and sore (and her stitches are still fresh), plus the fact that she’s wandering with her mother and a dog with bad hips, they’re lucky they find it at all. After that it’s a little easier, although getting it to fit in the not- _quite_ -large-enough trailer takes some serious geometry skills and very odd angling and hard shoving.

It doesn’t help that it was covered in overgrowth, hiding in plain sight. They walked past it twice.

Pidge is surprised to find her bag is in perfect condition and keeps it tucked up underneath her feet when they get back into the car. She feels much more comfortable knowing where her bayard is.

They have to stop at a hotel on the Pennsylvania border for the night, making next to no progress on the first day on the road.

Not that they mind.

They fall asleep in a massive, plush king sized bed, the dog firmly wedged between them, and morning comes as a welcome surprise. Until Hailey starts whining because she has to pee, and then they’re scrambling out of bed and looking for her leash before it’s too late and they have to pay for a carpet cleaning bill.

 

Pidge watches in mild wonder as her mother takes her morning medication without so much as a sip of water to wash it down. She has to swallow hers with a mouthful of shower water in the middle of shampooing.

She takes every toiletry not nailed down purely because she can.

Her mother makes her leave the towels and the toilet paper.

Pidge fights tooth and nail to keep the extra-large bathrobe though.

Before they head out for day two, hoping to get at least most of the way through Indiana before they have to stop again, they pop into a store for a white board, some sticky Velcro patches and a box of markers. The board is secured to the glove box in front of Pidge and she is given the most sacred honor of punchbug tally-keeping.

Pidge marks the board with black lines into a neat little scoreboard divided by date and by player.

On the left under ‘day one’ are five tallies in blue marker.

On the right under ‘day one’ are five tallies in green marker.

And on the second day, the punchbug battle is just as bloody.

 

“YELLOW VAN!”

“VANS DO NOT COUNT WE SETTLED THAT LIKE THREE YEARS AGO!”

“THAT WAS _THEN_ , PIGEON! THIS IS NOW!”

The yellow van isn’t counted, but the two bicker about it for twenty minutes anyway. Although bicker might not be _quite_ the right word for it.

 

“Blue one!”

“The convertible?”

“Yeah.”

“That did _not_ look like a punchbug to me.”

“Do I have to turn this car around?”

“I’m not gonna make you, I’m just saying _I don’t believe you_.”

“I’m making sure you know right now, I am only turning this car around to prove a point.”

“Prove me wrong then mom. Go for it.”

One hour later, Rebecca was right.

Pidge was effectively proven _wrong_ on a damn near cosmic scale.

And she may have flipped off the parked car as they drove by it for the second time, growling something about convertibles that makes her Lion sigh in her head.

 

Rebecca’s fist connects with Pidge’s arm in the same moment she lets out a downright _ear-splitting_ banshee shriek.

“ _AAAAHHH_!”

“FUCK MOM, DON’T DO THAT!”

“I forgot the word! I didn’t want you to get it but _I forgot the word_!”

“The word is _punchbug_ but you don’t just scream then!”

“I worked didn’t it? You knew what I meant!”

“Yeah after you nearly scared the shit out of me! Is this how we communicate now? _Punching and hollering_?”

Rebecca is laughing so hard she can’t breathe as her daughter’s voice climbs higher and higher as she comes down from her initial panic.

The Paladin’s pretty sure if it were possible Green would be hanging by her claws upside-down in Pidge’s head, confused and terrified beyond all reason by the intensity of human war-cries.

“IS THIS HOW WE COMMUNICATE NOW? PUNCHING AND HOLLERING?”

Rebecca doubles over the steering wheel in laughter, howling so hard tears streak down her cheeks and she’s wheezing as she smacks ineffectively at the teenager howling just as hard beside her, struggling to keep her eyes on the road.

 

Drive-thru restaurants are venerated as the divine gifts they rightly are when one is road-tripping.

Rebecca gets four cheeseburgers (extra pickles, no onion), Pidge gets more chicken strips and assorted dipping sauces than she could eat in an entire afternoon, they get an entire bag of fries to split between them, and Hailey gets a box of chicken nuggets all for herself.

The dog is very pleased by this turn of events, and even more pleased when she gets the leftovers from the women in the front of the car.

After everyone has eaten and grown content, Pidge bides her time, waiting until the right moment to strike.

 

“PUNCHING AND HOLLERING!”

Soda shoots out of Rebecca’s nose and onto the dash as Pidge startles what she insists is, in fact, the ever-loving crap _right out of her_ , laughing as she punches her child in the arm and demands a goddamn napkin.

They have to stop at a gas station to clean out the car after that.

Pidge considers it to be absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent _worth it_.

 

It’s just like old times.

So for a moment, she forgets.

Just a moment.

But that’s all it takes. She realizes her mistake the minute it passes her lips.

“Hey Matt I bet I can fit more gummy bears in my mouth than you.”

She and her mother don’t speak to each other for the rest of the afternoon.

Thankfully the afternoon doesn’t last much longer, and they find a hotel to stop at by eight.

The punchbug tallies for day two: Rebecca has seven, Pidge has six, making a total of twelve and eleven bugs respectively.

 

The gentle scratching of nails against her scalp and the steady rise and fall of her mother’s chest are all she needs to wander comfortably into dreamland, embraced inside and out by love as her Lion lights the way down. Just as she starts to drift off she swears she hears her mother mumble something into her hair. The warmth of her breath weighs softly against her scalp.

“ _I’ll miss you so much, Pigeon, but I’ll stay strong for you. I promise_.”

She has the nightmare again, but the green light keeps it far at bay.

 

“Moooom, come on,” Pidge whines, thumping her forehead against the locked door roughly. “You’ve been in there for like twenty minutes; I have to _peeeeeeeee_.”

“Do you really now?”

She can _hear_ the cheeky grin through the door and growls low in her throat. The fact that she can hear that the sink just turned on behind the door is _not helping_.

“I _will_ pee on the hotel floor if you don’t let me in. Don’t think I won’t.”

“I _know_ you won’t.”

 _Is that a fucking challenge_?

The Paladin unzips her jeans, laughing as the door suddenly swings open and her mother shoves her into the bathroom with a wide-eyed expression of disgust and amusement.

She ends up curling up in the front seat with a her threadbare quilt when they head out again, in sweatpants today, cramping and bleeding and hostile and ready to fistfight anyone who so much as _breathes wrong_ in her direction. It was right on time, as per _fucking_ usual.

Punchbug for the day is not suspended, however.

Come hell and high water, punchbug will never be suspended.

 

The squeaking has been going on for roughly… forty minutes now. Hailey finally found her favorite squeaky toys at the bottom of her basket, the matched set that look like a cheeseburger and fries. The ones with the painfully shrill little high-pitched squeakers in them.

How Hailey has not grown bored of her squeaking yet, Pidge cannot fathom.

 

After the second hour of constant squeaking Pidge seriously considers chucking the toys out of the window onto the side of the freeway.

 

After the third hour she does.

After the third hour plus fifteen minutes she manages to find the dog toys on the side of the road where they landed, and her mother lets her back into the car.

Hailey thumps her tail against the back of the driver’s seat with delight as she pushes the squeaking into its _fourth_ consecutive hour.

 

After five hours of non-stop ‘ _squeaka-squeaka-squeaka-squeak_ ’ just behind her seat Pidge locks the toys in the glove compartment and she thanks every star in the sky that the dog can be essentially memory-wiped into not caring with the gift of a plain hamburger.

 

They make it to a hotel in western Oklahoma before nine. Rebecca has claimed a total of twenty-seven punchbugs over the duration of their trip. Pidge has claimed a total of thirty-one. So far, victory seems like it might be hers.

But until they reach wherever it is in Arizona they have to be tomorrow, nobody is calling it.

Tides can change in a heartbeat.

Pidge still remembers the day that her mother called twelve in the span of ten minutes. She still adamantly believes the universe was conspiring against her that day. It was a cosmic conspiracy.

“I’m going to go pick up a pizza, Pigeon, I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Triple peperoni?”

“You wound,” Rebecca laughs and Pidge has a strange thought in her mind as she blends her mother’s voice with her Lion’s for a moment. “Of course. Lock the door.”

Pidge salutes from her messy blanket nest on the hotel bed beside Hailey as the dog sprawls back into her lap for head scratches.

 

A wave of cold excitement washes over her and the rumbling voice of the Lion suddenly floods her brain and her senses, giving her a flash of hazy double vision as she tries to figure out what’s going on.

**_I can sense the Castle!_ **

Pidge nearly falls out of bed.

“ _Really_?”

**_Yes! The hailing beacon is faint, but I can hear it!_ **

The tears biting in the young Paladin’s eyes are hard to identify; there’s joy, so much joy, she can feel her heart aching with excitement, but there’s fear too. She’s afraid.

She just came home.

She knew she’d have to leave.

She doesn’t want to leave yet.

She’s not ready.

She just got here.

She’s not ready. And the Green Lion knows this.

**_I will devote to hailing the Castle, cub. Rest. Enjoy this time. Think not of tomorrow._ **

She listens.

She doesn’t even hesitate.

It’s so much easier not to think, to just enjoy.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t cry a little as she sinks her teeth into the first slice of pizza she’s had in who knows how long. If Rebecca wonders why her daughter is sniffling into the crust she says nothing, only grabbing the girl in a gentle side hug as they watch one of the DVD’s her mother slipped into her suitcase when the teenager wasn’t looking. If she feels the rumble of a grateful purr in her daughter’s chest as they lean into each other she doesn’t acknowledge it.

The moment is quickly ruined (or, really, saved) when Rebecca belches so loud it startles the dog right off the bed.

It’s quickly followed by a character in the film announcing with pride; “ _I’m fluent in Flatula, Jim. Took two years of it in high school_.” And the two of them howl with laughter until their bellies ache.

 

They roll out of bed just before nine, both deciding coffee and just _going_ is the best possible way to start the day. Again the two of them find themselves praising the almighty drive-thru window.

Pidge demands two shots of espresso in her drink.

Rebecca laughs and calls it ‘ _weak bean water_ ’, getting seven in hers.

One of them ends up riding out mild caffeine shakes for an hour afterwards, and it’s _not_ Rebecca.

 

They’re both tied at thirty-three punchbugs and talking about getting something for lunch when it finally happens.

**_CUB._ **

“ _Holyshitwhat_ -”

**_The Castle is responding, put on your helmet-_ **

Pidge is already digging through the bag at her feet, scrounging in frustration as she finds her gauntlets first, the helmet covered by clothes that she flings wildly into the back of the car as her mother stares at her in quiet concern.

Pidge pulls her helmet down over her head with a soft _thunk_ , heart racing in her ears as she taps the side nervously out of habit, only half expecting to hear a voice at all. The reply she gets is faint and rushed and breathy and it takes a half a second for her to mentally slow it down enough to understand what she hears.

“ _Allura_?”

“Oh Pidge thank- _thank the stars_ , I was so worried. Where are you? Do you know where you are? What happened to your Lion? I can’t see you or the Lion on the scans anywhere. I only have the vaguest idea of where you might be and-”

“I’m ok, I’m ok,” she breathes, tears burning in her eyes as she lets out a shaky laugh. “It’s a long story Allura, but the short version is that I’m on Earth and I’m on my way back to my Lion right now. _I’m ok_.”

“ _Of all the places in the universe_ ,” the Princess laughs, her voice growing steadier and brighter with each passing tick. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine Allura, I can’t complain. How are _you_? How are the _others_?”

A long silence stretches between them and her stomach twists. She drags out her words nervously, prodding for answers as gently as she can.

“Allura? How are the boys? _What’s going on_?”

There’s a tired sigh on the other end of the line that chills the blood in Pidge’s veins nearly solid.

“I have only managed to recover Keith so far, Pidge. He’s in a pod now, he… he wasn’t well when Coran and I found him. Coran is keeping an eye on him now in case anything changes, _he should be fine though_ , we just aren’t… we aren’t completely sure yet. We’re not sure what happened to- to anyone yet.” She sighs softly, so very softly, the sound only just barely picked up by the microphone. The Paladin swears she hears a soft hiccup before Allura continues. “You’re the first person I’ve found a trace of since.”

As much as she appreciates the honesty Pidge can’t help the nauseated horror churning in her stomach.

“Allura?”

“Yes Pidge?”

“Don’t come get me. Not yet, please,” she turns away instinctively, though she knows Allura can’t see her. She winds her arms around herself slowly. “Find the others first. I’m safe where I am right now, you can save picking me up for last.”

“What in the universe are you talking about?”

“It will still be a day or two before I can get back to the Green Lion anyway- we got separated, _it was my fault_. But even then I have a plan, an idea lined up- I didn’t know when I would hear from you, so I’ve been thinking…” She chews on her words, fear stinging her throat. She can’t keep turning away from the question burning in the back of her mind. “I’ll be alright for a little while, I promise. I don’t know if… I don’t… Do you have the logs from the wormhole?”

It’s only now that Pidge notices the car has stopped and pulled over to the side of the road. Her mother’s hand settles gently on her shoulder and squeezes in a way she knows radiates concern, but she can’t bear to face her yet. She hasn’t even explained anything, and now her mother is hearing _this_ …

“Only the audio,” the Altean’s voice waivers slightly. “The visuals were lost the moment the wormhole was corrupted. Why?”

“Can you… can you play them for me?”

“Pidge, _no_ ,” Allura gasps. She must be able to hear the pain in her Paladin’s voice, and she sounds close to tears herself. The teenager suspects the Princess has listened to them long enough that she knows no one else should ever have to again.

“ _Please Allura_ , I’ve been having nightmares about it. I just… I just want to know if I’m actually remembering what happened. I can’t remember… _I can’t remember_. I want to know for sure. Please…”

“Pidge, you don’t… you don’t need to hear it-”

“Damnit, Allura _please_! I need to know!”

There’s a long pause, completely devoid of even the sound of her own breathing, and for a moment she wonders if the weak connection was lost before Allura speaks again, suddenly sounding _exhausted_. “Are you sitting down?”

“Yes.”

There’s a soft hum of static before the recording starts. The voices are distorted slightly, but Pidge would recognize them anywhere.

For the first time she hears her own voice in the mix.

_‘I can’t see, I don’t- I can’t see any of you, guys where-’_

_‘Please say something I can’t be alone please say something anybody-’_

_‘Holy shit what’s happening where is everyone-’_

_‘I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you but if you can hear-’_

_‘Somethings wrong, I can’t- I can’t feel my-’_

_‘I’m scared guys, where are you-’_

_‘Respond, Paladins! I repeat, respond Paladins! Please I need-’_

_‘I can’t see anything I can’t see anything-’_

_‘Oh my god is this blood-’_

_‘Please, please, somebody, anybody, please, I can’t-’_

_‘Somebody please-’_

_‘Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? Don’t leave me-’_

_‘Paladins respond, I repeat, Paladins- kids, kids please, please say something-’_

_‘I need help guys, there’s blood everywhere there’s so much blood I can’t-’_

_‘I can’t be alone again- please somebody say something!’_

There’s a horrible _whump_ that echoes over the comms in the middle of it, almost drowning out Shiro’s voice entirely in that moment, the word ‘kids’ almost unidentifiable, and suddenly her own terrified voice cuts from the feed entirely as the screaming slowly grows less and less intelligible.

Pidge remembers waking up on the floor of her Lion, and she has a painful feeling that was the sound of her own body being thrown across the cabin so brutally that she blacked out.

But her nightmare…

It was right.

That means…

 _That means_ …

She hears a soft _click_ and suddenly her mother’s arms are around her, forcing her to remember that she’s awake, that she’s alive, that she’s alright.

Her lip trembles violently as she takes a shaking breath, steeling herself.

“When will you be here?”

There’s a sniffle on the other end of the line before the Princess speaks, her voice just as strangled as her Paladin’s. “It’s hard to say, the Castle is still in a bit of a state, but I think I can be there within thirty of your hours. I still have work to do, but I’ll leave the frequency open, in case you need… I’ll leave it open to you. I’ll answer if you hail.”

Pidge nods before remembering that the Princess can’t see her, and she gives her a quiet noise of affirmation.

She can work with thirty hours.

The moment the feed to the Castle fades out Pidge melts into a puddle of vibrating, horrified tears, tearing off her helmet and sobbing into her mother’s shoulder as her brain goes into overtime thinking of the worst possible scenarios, the worst possible…

She’s not sure how long she cries into her mother’s shoulder, but when she pulls away the blue-grey sweatshirt is soaked with saltwater and Hailey is whimpering gently and trying to stretch far enough to lick the teenager’s face.

 

Pidge is about halfway through her bottle of water and rubbing gently at her bloodshot eyes when her mother finally speaks.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shakes her head.

“You will have to talk about it eventually.”

“I know,” she grunts, her voice strained.

The car finally starts back up again and climbs back off the side of the road onto the freeway. It’s not until late in the afternoon that the weight of Pidge’s breakdown seems to lift. They leave the radio on and hum along to the music.

Punchbug is suspended for the rest of the ride, and it ends in a tie.

 

Her mother pops into a grocery store really quickly, coming back out with a spoon and a pint of ice cream that has peanut butter cup chunks in it, handing it over to her daughter wordlessly before driving back toward the interstate.

It helps a little.

The fuzzy socks with little cats and stars printed on them help too. Just a little.

 

A sleek, glossy black motorcycle zooms past them on the quiet back road, peeling in from out of nowhere in the growing sunset. Only a flash of scarlet jacket catches the teenager’s eye before they take off past them with a low mechanical roar. Rebecca snorts and shakes her head, a dangerous grin tugging at her mouth as she shakes her shoulders out in excitement.

“Oh this bi- _hell_ no- _hang on honey_.”

To be fair now, her mother has never driven like this before. Ever.

So when Pidge grips the armrests so hard her knuckles turn bone white as her mom chases after the strange motorcyclist there is a very loud wailing in her brain demanding ‘ _WHAT THE HELL_ ’ over and over again and numbing all of her higher thought processes. The Green Lion is amused and horrified at the same time, struggling to soothe her chosen as she purrs in humor.

The only reason they’re able to catch up at all is that the empty road is completely straight in this stretch, giving Rebecca the chance to drive without needing to account for the trailer behind her.

They manage to pull up alongside the motorcyclist, giving the Paladin an excellent view of the embroidered leather jacket on their back; the material is a rich and flashy red, decorated with what Pidge recognizes distantly as an embroidered canine skull in dull white, framed by a silver moon on one side and splashes of greys that hint at an ear and fur. There’s black and red writing stitched on the moon that Pidge can’t identify off-hand, not from this angle or in this lighting. Rebecca rolls down the window and hangs her head out like a dog as she calls out to the driver beside her.

“ _Does the Commander know you stole her design_?”

A powerful, familiar feminine voice hollers back over the howling wind, her laughter muffled by the full-face helmet; “ _I asked for her permission, you know_!”

“ _That would be a first_!”

“ _Besides, red on red just doesn’t have the same effect, you know that_!”

“ _You could have gotten a black jacket_!”

“ _I have an aesthetic going, honestly woman_!”

 

The motorcyclist makes it to their destination first, and the pair drive up to see the woman leaning casually back against her bike and polishing her helmet as they pull up, looking like she had been waiting for them for hours when she had only gotten there _maybe_ a minute before them. She poses in front of the house under the orange and pink sunset like something out of a magazine, legs crossed at the ankle as she watches them roll up.

Rebecca is still lightly cursing the curving road when she sees her. Pidge is still trying to pry her nails out from where they sunk into her armrests.

The woman unzips her leather jacket and rolls her shoulders as she calls out to greet them with a toothy grin, _completely unnecessary_ sunglasses hanging from her prominent nose as she waves. Her closely-cropped black hair sticks up from where it must have been sweaty under the helmet, a few thin streaks of white punctuating her almost punk-rock look as she strides over with casual swagger.

“After all these years I would have expected Bora to change _a little_ ,” the blonde woman behind the wheel grins, not a bite to a single word she says as she pulls into the driveway. “You’d think responsibility would change her, but _noooo_.”

Pidge’s mother glances at her still-open window with a cheeky laugh as the woman in question gives her a gloved middle finger. She leans against the open window and sticks her head into the car with a warm smile as she greets Rebecca and then Pidge in turn. Hailey barks for attention and the woman waves to the dog with a laugh. She bumps foreheads with Rebecca roughly in greeting.

There’s a soft California girl lit to her words, underneath all the polish and the age, and Pidge can pick it up if she really listens for it.

“The last time I saw _you_ I think you must have been about this big,” Bora smiles and gestures with her hands, showing Pidge a distance of only about a foot. She was only an infant back then. “Well, no that’s not true I suppose. The last time I saw you, you were trying to pick a _fight_ with one of your instructors about the Kerberos mission. Again. _I swear you nearly decked him right then and there_. Not that I was rooting for it or anything, but you certainly did _not_ make it easy keeping them off your scent.”

And that’s when she takes off her sunglasses and Pidge feels like the most oblivious human being on the planet as she recognizes the grinning woman in front of her. If she somehow wasn’t sure the two little moles underneath her right eye really cement it.

Bora.

Bora _Gyeong_.

How the fuck did her mother know _the_ Bora Gyeong.

First Katya Petrovna, and now this?

How many secrets has her mother been keeping from her?

Granted she’s never really _asked_ , never really even thought to, but still…

 _How many secrets, mom_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay yeah so maybe I buttered you all up with a little humor and fluff so that Allura’s first call would be that much more of a mood-whiplash.
> 
>  
> 
> I was going to use google translate as I am not in fact multi-lingual in order to better distinguish which Paladin was which in the memory/nightmare but I figured it would come out a wonky mess so I nixed that entirely. 
> 
> I drew from my relationship with my mom for this, especially for the roadtripping. We did a long fucking roadtrip recently so I basically just translated memories into words for a lot of those scenes.
> 
> Especially the punchbug thing. My mom and I get violent, hollering at the tops of our lungs and socking each other hard enough to bruise. There’s nothing we get from it, just the bragging rights for the drive or the day, but we get intense, and it’s a matter of goddamn honor when someone contests a call. We have turned the car around to prove a point.
> 
> I wish I was kidding but all of the punchbug stuff is literally just quotes from my life. Including the entire ‘PUNCHING AND HOLLERING’ bit almost word-for-word.
> 
> The roadtrip was done with two big dogs, fyi. Not something I would recommend. 
> 
> The next chapter is going to be a quick look at how Allura and Coran have been handling their post-wormhole experience. I want to have it done and up by Monday night but I’m going to be occupied most of the weekend so I’m not sure if it will happen by then. I'll try.
> 
> And I drew a sketch of what the back of Bora’s jacket looks like as a reference but I can’t do anything because I don’t have a scanner and I don’t have a tablet, which makes it even more frustrating because do you know how hard animal skulls are to draw? I say this as someone with an animal skull tattoo- they are fucking hard.
> 
> (Had to make a quick edit in the notes for chapter 10, made a mistake with the ages, don't worry about it.)


	13. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief survey of the aftermath.
> 
> The Alteans are stubborn; the Lions are scattered, the Castle is broken, the future is bleak, but they will pick up the shattered pieces with confidence. They will rise above this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who got a wifi signal when they didn’t think they would have one and also zero impulse control!
> 
> I wasn’t going to post it early, but, again, zero impulse control.

Princess Allura takes a step back from the control panel as she lets the connection to the Green Paladin fade. She closes her eyes and breathes slowly, counting two ticks in, two ticks out, trying to compose herself.

She manages to remove her earrings and make it out through the door of the Bridge before collapses into herself, shrinking with grateful tears.

One of her Paladins is _alive_.

One of the ones she had sworn…

She had drilled the audio into her head day after day until she could mouth the words, the sounds, until she could predict every syllable and every thump or electrical charge that came next. The Green and the Yellow Paladins were the ones she worried about the most- one stopped responding long before the audio would fade, and the other was bleeding to an extent she could not determine but that was terrifying to him. Even if she couldn’t understand what was happening to the others, even if she couldn’t know if the others were worse off, she worried most for the ones whose conditions she could guess at.

The Red Paladin is safe. He and the Castle had been thrown out of the wormhole almost together, a grand cosmic coincidence casting them out within a stone’s throw of the same solar system, and the Red Lion had exhausted itself into stasis flying back to the Castle to protect its injured and incapacitated Paladin.

Given the condition he was in, Allura thanks every star she’s ever laid eyes upon that the Castle ended up being so close by. She’s not sure…

The mangled body of the Red Lion is limp in its hangar now, waiting patiently for Coran to bring the solar lamps back online. He’s still not sure what went wrong or where. It could be anything. The Castle is barely limping along right now as it is and everything seems broken somewhere right now.

Even though the Red Lion is a creature of machine and lost techniques once so advanced they may as well be purely magic, there is something deeply visceral about seeing its internal parts hanging out of its abdomen, all wires and mangled metal. It calls to mind horrific parallels, dark ironies, memories she had buried the moment she realized _when_ it was that she had awoken. Memories she had tried to purge when she realized they would only hinder her as she moved forward.

Thankfully that is the worst of it. The Red Lion appears alright otherwise, and had flown itself to safety well enough, if far slower than Allura would have liked; but until Keith is awake again, until the Lion’s Paladin can check for damage in ways an outsider can never understand, she can’t be completely sure. She marks the solar system for safe-keeping, in case there are missing parts drifting forgotten in the darkness.

But she is convinced that is the worst of it for the Lion. It has to be. _She wants it to be_.

Things are already difficult enough.

She just wants this one small victory.

She’s had so few since this war began.

 

Coran lets himself lean back against the wall in frustration as the answers continue to elude him. A few thin tendrils of red-orange hair hang forward in his face and he huffs to himself in quiet amusement, wiping them back with one dirty gloved hand.

He could swear the deadly tip of the Red Lion’s tail flicks for half a moment.

He wonders how she must be feeling.

It feels strange to call the Lions ‘it’, knowing what he knows. But he does around the Princess, around the others. It doesn’t seem right that he knows more about the Lions than their current Paladins. It’s not fair to them.

Not that he knows _much_ , not nearly as much as the Paladins of old, but he knows enough.

He was a friend, practically a brother to the last Paladins. They had come into their own at the same time he had, and they grew together. His assignment as time went on was primarily to the maintenance of the Lion hangars, and it gave him a special kind of access to both the young Paladins and the Lions.

He knows that there is more to the Lions than history remembers. More than outsiders know.

He knows they have personalities, likes and quirks.

He knows that for Paladins who have deep, powerful bonds with their Lions, they can communicate. He caught then-Prince Alfor mumbling to himself on more than a few occasions, talking with the Yellow Lion as if it, as if she were a person. Sometimes a Paladin would jolt or laugh unexpectedly and they would shrug it off with a half-hearted phrase about their Lion needing them.

Kharine was the Paladin who shared his experiences most freely, and it was through him that Coran learned a little of the depths of a Lion’s personhood.

The Green Lion had a repertoire of puns spanning back thousands upon thousands of years, mostly in Altean, Galran and Trade, and she was always eager to share her knowledge. Kharine himself was more than happy to drag someone else into what he called his undue suffering, parroting every pun she ever made so that everyone around him would hear it too. Coran liked to give her new ones. Kharine had more than once threatened him because Coran would talk to himself while he was working in the Green Lion’s hangar, casually spouting off jokes and puns that he knew she would hear and relay with glee to her Paladin no matter where he was on or off the Castle, as long as he was in range, often with no regard for the fact that he was sleeping or eating or in the middle of a ‘very important diplomatic meeting’ in his chambers.

Of course that only made Coran research even more jokes for the Lion to use because a grumpy, sleep deprived Kharine was _hilarious_. He had exceptionally twitchy ears that would go into overdrive when he was tired and he was completely unaware of it.

Coran locks eyes with the Red Lion, half-expecting a flash of acknowledging light to shine behind them as he stares.

She’s limp and sprawled on her side like a gutted animal, mouth still hanging open from where she had used the last of her own strength to let him and Allura into her cockpit so they could carry her precious cargo out to a healing pod.

He knows she’s still there somewhere, in a state of exhausted repose, always a little aware, so when he considers going in to check on her mechanics personally he makes sure to try to discuss it with her first. If he even thinks she might refuse he’ll leave her to her devices. She’s the Guardian Spirit of Fire, after all, and though he and her last Paladin Anduel were close once he knows the Lion has always been an exceptionally cautious and finicky one. And for good reason.

She may be one of the smaller Lions but it’s still best not to anger a living machine so large you don’t even measure up to its claws.

 

Allura wanders in the direction of the Red Lion’s hangar after she collects herself, wiping her face on the sleeve of her shirt when she stands. She wants to give Coran the news in person.

She can see Coran leaning back against the wall, and if she stares long enough she’s quite sure he’s talking to himself. He seems to ask something she’s not close enough to hear, and she sees a brilliant flash of light behind the eyes of the Red Lion that makes him laugh out loud to himself.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” he shakes his head as he pushes up and away from the wall, shoulders sagging with exhaustion as he crosses the distance with a wry smile pulling at his mouth. He glances up and his step hiccups in surprise when he sees the Princess standing in the entryway, eyes bloodshot and skin washed out with exhaustion.

He crosses the distance with a much quicker stride, tilting his head to look at her better as she gives him a watery smile.

“Is everything alright Princess?”

“I found one of them-” is all she can manage to get out before Coran is holding her in a back-breaking embrace, and she returns it in kind, laughing and crying in the same breath as a tiny amount of the monumental weight resting on her shoulders finally lifts.

She pushes her face into his chest and laughs harder as he rubs his hands over her back comfortingly.

“She’s alive- Pidge is alive,” she smiles as she pulls back. “I found her.”

“Where?”

She shakes her head, rolling her eyes at the sheer absurdity of it all. “Her home planet, of all places.”

“The odds of that…” Coran laughs, putting one hand to his temple.

“I’m sure she’s already written up the numbers…”

“How is she?”

“Better than I expected. She sounded alright-”

“You couldn’t see her?”

“No, she was using her helmet, but not a gauntlet. I didn’t see her. Neither of us were really thinking about it at the moment…”

Coran nods, pursing his lips into a tired smile as he adjusts the collar of the shirt the younger Altean is wearing, noting with some amusement that the shade of pink she’s wearing does not match the sand-colored pants she dug out of her closet.

“This is wonderful news, Allura. Have you eaten yet?”

She shakes her head, digging in the pocket of her pants for her earrings. She slips them back on almost effortlessly. She fingers the jewels for a moment, as if she’s expecting someone to call her at any moment. She runs one hand through her the locks of hair hanging in front of her face, cringing slightly.

She hasn’t showered in days. She’s not sure how many. She’s not sure it matters.

Coran helped her pull her long curling tresses into a braid so snug it tugged at her scalp after they had patched themselves up from their own brush with chaos, and even though tendrils have come loose around her face and she can feel the grease on them that comes with being unwashed she can’t find it in herself to care.

She knows Coran has showered, but that’s only because he’s been waist or shoulder deep in parts of the Castle from waking to sleeping and the heavy blue-grey grease that keeps things running is something he can’t stand to leave on his skin.

“Come on then, let’s get something. How does fried frangrell sound?”

Allura laughs sleepily and loops her arm with Coran’s when he offers it, letting him guide her out of the Lion’s hangar. Her mouth waters involuntarily at the suggestion and she wonders how long it’s been since either of them ate. “That sounds lovely. With a pressed berry sauce?”

“Of course Princess. It wouldn’t be a proper fried frangrell without a pressed berry sauce for dipping.”

 

For the first time in days she peels herself out of her clothes and steps into a shower, letting the water wash over her in a steady stream as she closes her eyes and whispers prayers to long forgotten gods, giving thanks in the same breath, hoping against all hope that she will recover every last one of her Paladins.

After this she will never let them leave her again.

In the briefest spans of time she has come to love them as dearly, as fiercely and deeply as she had once loved each of the Apprentices to the old Paladins, the Apprentices she would have once upon a time risen to Queenhood alongside.

She presses two fingers to the raised silvery scar in the center of her chest, on her sternum just below her breasts. The five slender points of the starburst continue to be completely numb to her touch and unnaturally warm under her fingers, but she allows herself to trace the scar regardless.

It is one of the few things she now _knows_ without even the slightest shadow of doubt that she shares with her mother.

Quintessence sensitivity, stubbornness, pride and this scar.

Her father and her blood uncle often said she had her mother’s beauty, but she never saw it. She saw too much of Alfor in her face, in her nose and her hair and her eyes to see her mother Eris when she looked in the mirror. But when she traces this scar she knows deep down in her bones that it is a shared burden, one her mother shouldered with stoic grace, one she bears less confidently and through gritted teeth as it reminds her of too many things she does not want to dwell upon.

Eventually she realizes she has been standing under the shower of hot water long enough that Coran is knocking on the door, asking if she’s alright. She shakes her head and wills it to clear.

“Of course, yes, sorry Coran. I’ll be right out.”

“I’ll keep your plate warm.”

“ _Thank you uncle_ ,” she smiles softly as she murmurs, knowing that even at this distance, even with the noise of the falling water, he can hear her. Just barely. And she in turn can just barely hear his tired chuckle through the door as his footsteps fade.

 

Allura settles into her seat at the head of the table, and rather than take his place at her side Coran moves to stand behind her, carefully combing and brushing out her long mane of damp star white hair as she eats. He pulls it into a long, full braid, snug and rising in a crest against her scalp; something that will stay well out of her way until she showers again.

He knows it will be a while before he can get her to rest again.

She’s spent every waking moment since she came out of her own healing pod running herself ragged, helping with repairs when she wasn’t spending hours or days on end desperately trying to hail every single one of her missing Paladins and scouring the entire mapped cosmos for her lost Lions. And that’s not even considering the two separate occasions they’ve had to wormhole in a hurry away from a Galran fleet that stumbled across them by coincidence.

He doesn’t mind that his crispy frangrell has gone cold by the time he sits down, and he huffs with warm indignance when the Princess insists on getting him a fresh plate, pushing him back into his chair with a soft smile when he tries to take the plate from her hands.

Coran lets himself sink into his chair as she strides toward the kitchen and takes a moment to breathe.

He has weathered truly awful things in his lifetime, most of them (relatively) recently. He doesn’t have the kind of quintessence sensitivity Allura has or the instincts of the Paladins, but he is still a soldier by nature. He has still garnered and cultivated a strength that gives him courage, and he stubbornly uses that courage to believe that the future will be brighter. That the young Paladins-rising will survive, that they will return. He tugs carefully at his rolled up sleeves for a moment.

Indigo-grey soot smears over his bare forearms, over scars gained millennia ago and over scars still so fresh they ache in tenderness.

Coran lets himself slouch forward as he lays his head in his hands.

He was a soldier, yes, but he was a mechanic first and foremost. He enlisted because there was no better place to hone his inclinations and his abilities than in the Fleet of the Lions. Ending up on the Castle his grandfather had built, working on his grandfather’s legacy and a marvel of modern engineering, working among the very Paladins of Voltron had been a distant dream come true. He’d had to pinch himself more than once after receiving the news. And more than once after arriving on board.

His friendship with the Paladins who were only just coming into their own at the time was even more of a surprise.

His easy bond with then-Prince Alfor and his spirited bride Princess Eris was ultimately what would eventually pull him above his station and give him the ear of the Altean King and Queen. His status as the advisor to the King was unexpected- he was a soldier, a mechanic; he understood politics and diplomacy well enough considering the role of the vessel he was stationed on but it was hardly his primary scope of practice. Alfor always said it was his kindness, the openness of his heart and mind that made him truly worthy for the role.

Allura places a warm plate with a quiet clink before Coran and pulls him from his musings as she gives his shoulder a warm squeeze.

“I suppose I should retire for a few hours,” she smiles sleepily, only barely containing a yawn. Coran huffs quietly and ignores his station as pulls her down to press a paternal kiss to her forehead. She giggles as his moustache tickles her face.

“I will be checking on you after I eat,” he says, glancing around slowly. “And I’m sure the mice will tattle on you if you don’t rest, wherever they’ve gone off to now.”

Allura rolls her eyes and gives him a very prim, very _dry_ salute; a trait she no doubt picked up from her Paladins. Coran shakes his head and shoos her away gently, laughing to himself as she nearly bumps into the doorframe as she leaves.

 

She takes a brief detour on her way to her bed.

Allura stands in the empty chamber, closes her eyes, and _feels_.

Warmth.

Sadness.

Love.

Regret.

She can feel the faint resonance of quintessence in the space around her. She had always been sensitive to resonance, to quintessence itself, and she had gotten it from her mother, but until now she had always felt it to be a bitter-sweet thing. Resonance was what remained in a place, a volume of quintessence slowly dissipating into ether, marking the point of death for something that had so recently lived.

But when she stands here and closes her eyes, feeling with all her senses, she can hold the last fading remnants of her father’s quintessence and she can feel them slide out of her fingers like a heavy mist when she grasps at them too tightly.

The quintessence from the stored memories is different from what she is accustomed to. It’s thinner, hazier, but it’s still there. In order to store his memories a tiny, miniscule part of his quintessence, of his very life energy was left behind. And until recently, it was safe in the Castle, secure for future millennia.

She wishes he were still here.

She wishes her mother were still here.

They would know what to do, what to say. They were strong, and smart, and brave and kind, always in control and always able to adapt, everything Allura struggles with every single day as she realizes her title no longer applies.

The King and Queen are dead. Alfor and Eris have long since passed. Their daughter outlived them.

That means, by right, Allura is the Altean Queen. She stopped being the Princess thousands of years ago.

She’s the Queen of a Castle without an army, of a pride of mangled and missing Lions, of a single other Altean and a handful of odd aliens that call themselves Human. She is the Queen of a world that no longer exists.

A tiny part of her wonders if her mother’s quintessence after all these years would remain in the same place.

It had happened, or it had been rumored to happen, that sudden, violent deaths and deeply stubborn spirits could keep tendrils of quintessence from dissipating, leaving a permanent imprint of life in the place, an imprint rumored-

It wouldn’t matter either way, unfortunately.

Her mother died in a place now firmly nestled in the territory of the Galra Empire. Even if it was still there, she could never reach it.

Instead she opens herself to the fading warmth, praying it will stay with her in the days and years to come, praying she will still find guidance even if it is only her own. Even if the only wisdom she finds comes from within as she strives to emulate the King and Queen she fears she will never equal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Coran does not get enough love in this fandom, I really don’t. He seems like an afterthought ninety percent of the time and that’s so depressing because he’s so freaking awesome. And Allura’s treatment is pretty hit or miss, because when it’s good it’s great but when it’s bad it just makes me cringe. I sincerely hope I've done and will do them justice.
> 
> This chapter does mention vaguely some things and ties to 'The Apprentice in the Morningstar', but for the most part those things are still not revealed in any great capacity.
> 
> Except for that strange little starburst scar.
> 
> That wasn’t mentioned before.
> 
> And frangrell is like a really nice marbled pink Altean tofu that develops a savory-sweet taste when fried in a thin layer of oil. I love fried tofu, it makes an excellent snack.
> 
> I’m aiming for the next update to be Tuesday/Wednesday if I can manage it since I got this one done earlier than I expected.
> 
> Also when I got up this morning and saw 1000 hits on this fic I straight up squee'd.
> 
> Thank you all so much, I really cannot stress enough how much I appreciate all of this.


	14. Meant To Fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The caged birds that fly are the ones given the chance to learn. That doesn’t mean they’re the only ones who could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really sorry about how late this update is but, honestly, I had nothing. My poor brain took a shit on me I’m afraid. It actually crapped out just before the last update but I didn’t realize it at the time. In hindsight though… Yikes. I was not in a good place. 
> 
> I mean I had stuff; I had chunks of writing and a general layout for the progression of plot points and reveals, but I had no motivation or inspiration lately, among everything else. Unfortunately right now we’re kind of caught up with the earlier parts of the fic, so my slow days and my procrastinating days and my bad days mean no updates despite. This is the big drawback to writing semi-out of order. So I’m going to do what I can to try and make this a once a week thing, but I really can’t promise anything right now. Updates will happen when they happen.
> 
> Aaand for those who may appreciate a warning there are brief mentions of sex/sexuality in this chapter, nothing too explicit though. And the adults drink alcohol casually.
> 
> I really wanted to cut this chapter into parts and update once a day for like three straight days but I couldn’t find anywhere to do it that wasn’t rudely cliffhanger-y or made the chapters wildly different sizes, so please just enjoy this massive nightmare of a chapter. I had to force myself to stop at this point because I think it's been like five days since my muse came back and my head leveled out and this was just the chapter that would. not. die. It consumed every spare moment I had. The next chapter is already in progress and at like 1000 words right now.

 

Bora Gyeong pulls a few plastic bags out of the saddlebags on her bike and gestures toward the house with a flourish and a cheeky smile as her guests step out of their car; “ _Mi casa_.”

Pidge shoulders her backpack carefully as her sneakers hit concrete, the soft clunking of her armor comforting through the thick canvas material. The hazy rumble in the back of her mind where Green is nuzzled into her is just as comforting.

The house is a modern build, geometric, all hard angles and towering panes of glass, and it looks like it’s two stories in some places and three in others. There’s nothing around for miles but the dry scrub, the nearest city easily a half an hour away, the Garrison another half hour in the opposite direction- Gyeong must have an amazing view of the stars at night. The constellations out here must be crystal clear.

She can already see the first glimmers of starlight sprinkled across the sky as the sun sinks beyond the horizon.

Pidge secretly hopes she’ll manage one last round of stargazing with her mother before she has to… before she has to go.

Green purrs warmly.

**_Will be alright, cub. Not as if you won’t be able to return someday._ **

She sighs as she follows the woman up to the house, mentally shrugging in response. It’s true enough.

Probably.

Wide doors swing open and Pidge steps through, looking around in curiosity, locking suddenly on warm orange eyes boring deep into the Paladin’s soul as she steps over the threshold. A large tortoiseshell gargoyle with a slightly distended belly perches on a table by the door, flicking its plush tail back and forth slowly as it surveys the strange newcomer in its domain.

“That’s Medusa. She’s a bit… finicky. Friendlier than she looks though, if you give her time. Though she’s got a couple of little buns in the oven so who knows right now. Pregnancy made her _weird_.”

Gyeong’s voice is so different here. When she was in the hangar trying to talk down ‘Matt’, it was controlled, serious, gentle but leaving no room for argument. It was a little like Shiro’s leader voice- she’s probably where he got his own leader voice, actually.

Now it’s energetic, off-beat, and she hesitates on certain words or laughs softly in the middle of speaking, smiling and gesturing and acting like a whole other person.

The woman gives the massive cat a quick scratch behind the ears with her free hand as she passes, humming quietly as it leans into her touch. At no point does it break eye contact with Pidge. The feline’s gaze stays level with her until Hailey wanders and wiggles her way over the threshold- and then the cat fluffs up and darts down the hallway in streak of dark mottled fur. The dog remains gleefully oblivious as she trots into the house.

“Well, that went better than I expected.”

Rebecca pauses. “How so?”

“Last time she saw a dog was when she attacked Katya’s dalmations. No claws or anything, but she made it clear this was _her_ house and they were to follow _her_ rules.”

“And did they?”

“Like a well-oiled machine.”

“Oh yeah, she’s definitely your cat,” Rebecca laughs as she shuts the door behind her.

Gyeong simply sticks out her tongue and walks down the hall toward a huge, honestly obscenely large kitchen and plops the bags on the counter with casual swagger. Rebecca nudges her daughter gently and they follow, the teenager taking in the sheer size of the house with curious eyes.

 

“You’re staring.”

“Can you _blame_ me?”

There’s an easy intimacy between the two women as Rebecca runs her hand through the shorter locks on her friend’s head, tousling them gently and admonishing her with grinning affection for cutting off all of her beautiful long black hair. Bora pushes Rebecca away gently by putting a hand on her face and laughingly calls her a hypocrite.

“So what’s for dinner?” Rebecca hums, pawing at the bags. Bora slaps her hands away.

“Bitch this is my house, you are my _guest_ \- I will make dinner. Go wash up before I drag you in there by your pretty blonde head.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes.

“ _Go_ ,” the black-haired woman admonishes before hip-checking her friend out of the kitchen.

“I’ll try to make it quick so you can get your turn, Katie.”

She’s become so accustomed to being called by her childhood nickname and even by ‘Pidge’ that after all this time ‘Katie’ feels odd now. Like shoes she outgrew, like it might never fit her again the way it used to. Apparently her mom notices the odd expression etched into her features and cocks one thick eyebrow with an amused smile.

“What, would you prefer I call you Pigeon?”

Pidge frowns, feeling her expression turn into more of an embarrassed pout as her mother’s eyebrow quirks even higher. “You didn’t hesitate to call me Pigeon in front of Katya Petrovna.”

“Yes, well, she changed your diapers so I figured there wasn’t much I could do that would embarrass you.”

“Nah, you just weren’t thinking,” the astronaut in the kitchen chuckles. “You were always a little scatterbrained.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes with a shrug; “I suppose if the shoe fits.”

 

The bathroom door clicks shut and Bora nods as she slices into the packet of chicken breasts.

Hailey lays down in front of the door with a soft whine and rests her head on her paws. She never did like being locked out.

“There’re some lemon bars in the fridge,” the older woman hums as she gently slices the package open, peeling it back with one hand as she moves the cutting board closer. “I’m not going to tell your mom if you want a little dessert before dinner.”

Pidge doesn’t need to be told twice as her stomach growls in excited anticipation. She carries the chilled plate back to the counter and peels off the plastic wrap carefully, kicking her shoes off as she takes her seat.

“And I figure you should get some before your mom eats them all. You know how she gets with lemon- _anything_ ; it’ll be a miracle if we have any left to have with coffee tomorrow morning.”

Pidge blinks through a mouthful of dessert, swallowing the oversized bite. That kind of knowledge is intimate, best-friend type knowledge. That, and the way the woman smiles at her like any of her ‘Aunts’ and ‘Uncles’ back home, like any of her parent’s friends- there’s a history. A _big_ one.

“How do you know my mom anyway?”

Bora hesitates. She sets the blade of the knife down on the cutting board beside the raw chicken but doesn’t let go of the handle. She flexes her fingers around the handle, hand tensing and relaxing slowly. “… How much do you know about your mom’s life from- from _before_ she had you?”

The Paladin purses her lips and shrugs.

“Not much. She never really talked about it, and dad and Matt never told me anything.” She doesn’t mention that she never really asked, either. She’s not sure what it says about her that she never really asked about her mom’s life from before she existed.

The woman nods and picks the knife back up, slicing into the meat lengthwise with the kind of ease that came from years and years of practice and she starts measuring out the strips by eye.

“Then I suppose I shouldn’t be the one to tell you about it. That’s her story, not mine.”

Pidge pouts and takes another bite, talking through the pastry. “What _can_ you tell me?”

The astronaut shrugs as she cuts through the chicken. “Harmless stuff I suppose. Stuff mostly about me. She knows me because she and I grew up together, we were best friends. Lived in the same neighborhood most of our lives. Went to the same schools, dated a lot of the same people before she met your old man and got those permanent goo-goo eyes for the _nerdiest_ boy in school, which considering our classmates was honestly pretty impressive, got in more trouble than teenagers should _ever_ be in-”

“ _Wait wait wait_ ; same schools? But, you went to the original Galaxy Garrison academy in California as a teenager…”

Bora nods with pursed lips, a tiny smile quirking at her mouth as she slides the knife into the third chicken breast. She didn’t quite say anything she shouldn’t have, per say, but it was clear she wanted the connections to be made.

“ _My mom went to the first academy_? She was one of the first graduates, then…”

“One of the top graduates, too. I mean, I was still _better_ ,” Bora grins cheekily, “but we competed like _bitches_ for top pilot. She made me work for that title.”

She turns the cutting board and tosses the empty package into the trash, slicing the strips of pale meat into large cubes.

“If I give you a knife and some vegetables will you cut your hand off with it?”

“I’m not my dad,” Pidge sticks her tongue out and readjusts the NASA sweatshirt. The older woman nods with pride.

“ _Atta girl_. Cutting board in the narrow cabinet by the oven, vegetables in the bag in the bottom of the fridge, knife at the top of the cutting block,” Bora orders casually, not even glancing behind herself as the Paladin shuffles around in the kitchen. “Mini potatoes in fourths, stems off the broccoli, aaaand preheat the oven to 450 on your way out. It’s already empty so you don’t need to take anything out of it.”

Pidge finds it’s a lot like cooking with her mom, if she’s being honest. They have the same style of instructing.

She watches as Bora flies through the last few strips of chicken and scoops them all into a bowl that she elbows aside, slipping over to the sink and washing her hands with a tiny grimace.

“Never got used to chicken slime. I know Charlotte did, but I never could,” she sighs. “ _Bleh_. Never grow up kid, cooking is gross. I wish I could still eat a pizza for dinner every night but my metabolism dumped me years ago.” She shakes her hands out over the sink. “I’m still not over that. _Worst breakup of my life_.”

Bora stretches her arms up above her head, rolling her shoulders and neck out, and as she moves her shirt climbs up her stomach to reveal splashes of red and faded black stippling on her side.

She glances over at the staring Paladin hesitating on a potato and smiles.

“The rumors were true, in case you were wondering.” She pulls the hem of her shirt, revealing a large tattoo on her side. It’s the same design as the pattern on her jacket, but smaller, the canine skull (wolf skull, she notes) not quite life-sized, except that here the watercolor is in shades of red and the writing on the moon is clearly written in elegantly styled English- ‘ _The Hecate Five_ ’.

The ink on the insides of the eye holes is a much lighter shade of red than most of it, almost pink, with tinges of orange, giving the skull a look as if it’s lit from within. It looks faded at the edges, the color soft in places, but the lines are still clear despite the fact that the tattoo is obviously older than Pidge.

“The original Five all got inked up together by a good friend. The curious were right, we just thought it was nobody’s business when people started asking. Still don’t know who even would have tipped them off though.”

“Do they all match?”

“Mostly. It was inspired loosely by mythology, and everyone had a different color-scheme. The Commander went with shades of grey paint for hers, more like pointillism really, and Felicitie went with green and frilly cursive lettering- the base design was the same though. Charlotte came up with it. Hecate’s Bad Bitches, she wanted us to call ourselves. It never quite caught on though. I admit I was tempted, but I already had one swearword inked permanently into my skin, I thought any more would just be excessive.”

A shrill _mrrow_ echoes off to Pidge’s left and she jumps and accidentally slices the potato in front of her diagonally, one chunk much larger than the other. She glares at the spud before turning her glower toward the source of the noise.

“Hey princess,” Bora hums as she readjusts her shirt. She bats the tortoiseshell cat back as she tries to climb up off the barstool and onto the counter. “No no, bad cat, you can wait, let me get a can.”

Medusa faces the teenager as she settles back in the chair. Pidge tilts her head and the cat gives her a slow welcome blink, orange eyes friendly as the cat rumbles at her. The teenager glances at the woman in the kitchen before returning with a soft, short purr of her own that makes the pregnant feline lean back in wide-eyed surprise.

The Green Lion chuckles in the back of her chosen’s head and Pidge rolls her eyes at the mechanical cat.

“I’ve spoiled her even worse since she got knocked up- I don’t even know where she could have found a tom to do it out here, but Medusa always was an industrious little shit.” She cracks open a can of cat food, dumps it out onto a plate gracelessly, and slides it carefully across the counter to the waiting tortoiseshell flicking her silky tail in barely controlled impatience. The cat pops up on her back legs and puts her little white front paws on the counter as she dives face-first into her meal. “We have a lot in common I guess.”

She rinses out the can, mumbling something about ‘expensive taste’, before chucking it over her shoulder into the recycling bin without looking.

Pidge finishes the last of the vegetables and sets them aside, not sure what to do next.

She’s still trying to reconcile the image of the stone-faced badass astronaut with the sunny woman in front of her. Shiro had mentioned in the past that Gyeong was nicer than she looked, and surprisingly patient, but she still can’t quite connect that with the woman now cooing at a pregnant cat wolfing a plate of food down, talking through a mouthful of lemon bar and wearing a fine layer of powdered sugar dusted over her face and black cotton shirt.

“Oh, you can go sit down on the couch if you want, I’ve got the vegetables from here. Hopefully your mom won’t waste all the hot water before you get your chance at a shower.”

The Paladin nods and slides off the chair, the ceramic floor cool against her bare feet- it looks like wood, but she remembers their old house having tiles that looked like oak wood. They were a lot easier to clean than wood floors, if she remembered right.

She plops down on the couch as Hailey wanders back over to her with a soft huff, resting her head on the couch and wagging her tail slowly. She’s surprised the dog waited outside the bathroom door as long as she did- she normally gives up much faster. Especially when there’s food.

Pidge’s eyes lock on the back of the jacket thrown across the plush armchair next to the couch and as she stares, scratching gently at the dog’s blocky head, she realizes she recognizes the characters. She realizes she _knows_ that language.

She’s spent the past five months struggling to teach herself how to read that language, on top of an entire second one at the same time.

She recognizes the language hand-stitched onto the silver moon emblazoned over the red leather. She can’t believe she didn’t recognize it sooner. Even in the dusk, even at a distance or an angle, the characters are painfully unique.

There’s no mistaking them for anything else.

The lettering stitched into the back of Bora Gyeong’s jacket is unquestionably, unmistakably, impossibly _Galran_.

 

Her fingers instinctively twitch for her bayard and all of her senses dial up to eleven in a heartbeat, a flush of nervous energy prickling under her skin as the Green Lion fidgets up in her head and down in her muscles with electric panic. Her bag is still at the counter across the room, but even with her stitches she can dive for it, grab it and go faster than she can be noticed. It will hurt, but she can do it.

Just then the bathroom door in the hallway behind her opens and a wave of steam rolls out. Her mother follows several seconds later, now dressed comfortably in shorts and a sweatshirt, a white towel loose around her shoulders.

“Mom,” Pidge hisses, glancing back to the kitchen where Bora is warming up a pan and butter on the stove. “ _Mom_!”

Rebecca settles on the couch beside the girl, crossing one leg over the other and lazily toweling at her pixie-short hair. “Yeah?”

“ _That language- nobody should- it’s not from Earth_ -” Pidge gestures erratically, hazel eyes wild, before Rebecca cuts her off with a long-suffering sigh and she calls out toward her friend.

“You are the furthest thing from subtle, you know that, right?” the blonde woman rolls her eyes in Bora’s direction, thumbing at the jacket when the other woman quirks one sculpted brow up in sincere curiosity.

“Hey, only like four people on this whole planet know how to actually read that language, and two of them are in this room. Nobody else at work knows what it is. They all think it’s from some obscure sci-fi novel.”

“Five, apparently,” Rebecca shrugs, patting her daughter’s shoulder comfortingly. Pidge is still gaping quietly at the stitching, and now at the women around her.

Bora glances at the teenager with wide eyes. “That… would explain some things, I suppose. Helps fill in a few gaps.” She nods slowly as she swirls the pan. “Yeah, that helps a little.”

Pidge is still, unfortunately, _super lost_. Green goes limp in her head as the adrenaline fades but the Paladin is still half-hyped up for a fight. But her mother is relaxed, so she follows her lead.

 

Rebecca crosses the distance to the kitchen, digging through the cabinets to produce a large black colored bottle with a soft ‘aha’, popping up on her toes in delight.

Her mother was never ashamed of the scars on her legs, exactly, but she knew that they made people uncomfortable, so she shied away from shorts or swimsuits unless she was around people she knew really well. Bora’s grey eyes cloud over when she stares at the markings spreading, long faded, over her thighs and calves.

Pidge knows they were from a terrible accident from when Rebecca was younger, when Matt was a little kid, and that accident was the reason she had to take anti-seizure medications for the rest of her life. The scars ached sometimes when it rained and the teenager has faint memories of being a little girl tracing the biggest one along the outside of her right leg, from mid-thigh down to her ankle- her mother would let her scribble on her with washable markers sometimes, on rainy days, after baby Pidge had announced that doodle therapy might help when it hurt. Rebecca never could deny those big puppy eyes.

Pidge tries to divert the other woman from the scars as she reclaims her seat at the counter, watching as the astronaut sprinkles (dumps) a pre-portioned dish of rust-colored seasoning into the sizzling butter in the pan; “That smells good.”

Bora smiles. “Yeah, it’s one of Charlotte’s recipes. That girl could _cook_.”

The name has been dropped a few times but Pidge isn’t sure who exactly the woman could mean. “Charlotte?”

Bora gapes quietly as she turns to Rebecca with wide storm-grey eyes. “ _Really_? Not even…?”

Rebecca crosses her arms and gives her friend a tired look, sighing and looking away as she chews on the inside of her cheek.

Bora continues, softer now, not making eye contact. “Long story, good friend. Great engineer.”

“Wait do you mean the Charlotte who went on the Europa mission? Charlotte Lauritsen?”

“That’s the one,” she smiles wistfully.

“What was she like?” The Galaxy Garrison textbooks and files were all fairly sparse when it came to information about the Hecate I crew. Sarah Hershel and Charlotte Lauritsen were written about sparingly- to be fair, they died young, and early in their careers, but the sheer volume of information missing was still strange. And there’s nothing more tempting to the teenager’s curious nature than an obvious secret.

Especially considering the information she _did_ have on Lauritsen. No surviving family members were ever mentioned. The most Pidge had ever read about the woman was that she was 28 at the time, born in southern California, and she was the crew’s engineer. She didn’t even have a full paragraph to her name. And now that Pidge thinks of it she can’t even remember seeing an official photo of the woman larger than her thumbnail.

At least Hershel had a paragraph, mentions of her family and her experiences before Hecate I. At least she had an official portrait that showed a little detail even if it was resized down to maybe two fingers.

Lauritsen had almost nothing. And in contrast to the other women, especially in contrast to the other dead astronaut, it was odd in a way she couldn’t place.

“She was smart. Funny. Super nice, would bend over backwards to help someone. Often did. Had a sixth sense about things, too. She was really perceptive. Always knew when something was up, even when you really didn’t want her to, sometimes even before you knew.” Bora’s ears flush pink and she shakes her head, talking like she can’t stop herself. “She knew before you did more than was reasonable, really. I’m still convinced she was a witch.”

Pidge shudders unconsciously, mumbling to herself under her breath; “Never a witch.”

Druid, witch- same thing. Enough bad experiences either way.

“She was my twin.”

Bora blinks and Pidge’s eyebrows rocket into her hairline as she rounds on her mother.

Rebecca tugs the oversized indigo sweatshirt around herself closer, smiling wryly as she pours out a small glass from the bottle, her fingers blocking the last half of the name- _Viking_ something _._ The clear amber fluid has an aroma that stings the teenager’s senses even at this distance and she crinkles her nose.

“ _Charlotte and Rebecca Lauritsen, future twin astronauts_ ,” the blonde chuckles and raises her glass in a half-hearted toast toward empty space. “ _With our honorary triplet, Bora Gyeong_. _May the stars tremble in our path and the skies we fly be eternally clear_. We were seven when we made that promise. Eighteen when we realized we had really seen it though. Twenty-three when we left terra firma for the first time.”

Rebecca takes the shot like a professional, shuddering faintly as she sets the glass back down. She stares resolutely into the middle distance and Pidge feels herself lean a little closer.

“I never told you about her because, honestly, I couldn’t _bear_ to. For the longest time just _thinking_ about her was like ripping my chest open and scrounging around in there for my lungs; it was impossible to focus, to breathe. Losing her…” she trails off, pouring herself another glass with a sigh. Instead of taking it she slides it to her daughter and smiles softly. “If you want to try it I won’t tell your dad.”

Rebecca blinks, unnoticed by her daughter, and purses her lips as if the statement is unexpected past her own lips.

Pidge sniffs at the glass before taking a tentative sip. Her lips pucker inward and she recoils in disgust, sliding the drink away from herself slowly as the women try to keep their snickering and smiles to themselves.

And she thought _nunvil_ was bad.

“You’re your father’s daughter, alright.”

Her mother takes the drink and throws it back with unnatural ease, setting the glass down with a bemused smile at her daughter’s disgusted expression.

“Losing Charlotte destroyed me. She was my other half.” Rebecca looks at Bora, her face twisting up with apology. “And losing her as part of what was supposed to be the most exciting moments in our careers… There was so much I never told you. There was so much I asked your brother and your father to hide from you. So much I asked everyone to forget. But you deserve to know.”

Bora stops her stirring and moves to put one hand on Rebecca’s, rubbing her thumb over the back of her hand gently. The blonde woman sighs and her voice is warmer when she continues.

“We were about to turn twenty-seven. The original Hecate Five were chosen from a pool, known only by an assigned number and by the personal data compiled. We were chosen for our mutual compatibility- last thing anyone wanted was a mission, especially one so big, to fail because of petty human inter-personal conflicts. So we didn’t know anything until we were all in that room together,” she laughs, rolling her eyes as she rubs at her face. “We didn’t know Katya or Felicitie before then; I mean, we knew _of_ Katya, who didn’t know the first astronaut to transition _during_ their career, and quite an illustrious one for her age; and Felicitie was a tech prodigy we had bumped into at school once or twice toward the end, but we became friends in that room.”

Bora cuts in, tossing the bowl of raw chicken into the pan and taking a half-step back as it sizzles. “It was a long year, longer than, actually; a lot of training, getting us ready for the most exciting development in our lives- humans, ice-drilling on a celestial body, looking first-hand for clues of extra-terrestrial life out there beyond our little blue planet.”

Rebecca lets out a brief hyena-cackle and Bora blushes and steps over again this time to slap her friend on the hand roughly as they remember some other secret they don’t bother sharing with the teenager. The blonde grins shamelessly at the woman trying valiantly to stuff a lemon bar into her face to silence her.

“You want to tell her how we know Galran?”

Pidge’s jaw drops involuntarily. They had just implied, said already, but… hearing it spoken out loud as a plain, casual fact is still a whole other experience.

Bora steels herself with a scarlet flush and a narrow-eyed pout. “Fine,” she laughs, “but I am not going to be held responsible for any corrupting of your teenage daughter’s innocent mind.”

“Pfft, _innocent_ ,” Rebecca snorts as she swipes the pastry out of the other woman’s hand. “It wasn’t _Matt’s_ computer I kept finding porn on-”

“ _MOTHER_!”

“-granted I’m pretty sure he was just better at deleting his history, but, you know. Whatever.”

Pidge can feel herself burning up like a supernova from her neck to her ears as the other women chuckle. She would love more than anything right now for a meteorite to drop out of the sky and strike her dead, right now. Just, right now.

Any second now…

_Now_.

“Like you can judge, honestly,” Bora shoves Rebecca’s shoulder gently and clears her throat. “So, since I don’t trust your mother to say it gently- the reason we know Galran is because, to make a very long and admittedly very slutty story short, we met a native speaker, a Galra. He crash-landed on Earth in the middle of one of our desert camping trips we used to go on to bond-”

“Slutty? You were the only one who fucked him.”

“ _REBECCA_!”

“Oh like you _didn’t_? It wasn’t even a one-time thing either.”

“ _No more alcohol for you_ ,” a brilliantly blushing Bora clucks as she steals the bottle away, laughing as a flustered Rebecca nearly launches herself over the counter after it.

“I’m not even drunk yet- give me like three more shots and an hour, then I will be.”

“You sound sixteen again,” the astronaut laughs. “Which, _somehow_ , reminds me kid- I have a flashdrive for you. Remind me about that after dinner.”

 

Pidge is almost afraid to ask and speaks slowly. “So, our species’ first contact with extraterrestrial life was…?”

Until just now she had either thought it was the Hecate VI crew being abducted on Kerberos, or, as a slightly better alternative, Lance trying to flirt with an alien princess who immediately handed him his own ass on a silver platter.

“First contact was actually me hitting him with a big stick, but _hey_ , all relationships start somewhere. For me and Thace, it was in the desert with a stick 'bout as big around at the end as my thigh.” She shrugs awkwardly. “I swung that shit like a champ.”

“ _Romantic_ ,” Rebecca croons. Bora narrows her eyes with a wicked gleam.

“Oh sure, my ‘meet cute’ wasn’t perfect, but for you and Sam-”

“Oh come on, don’t go there!”

“-it was when sixteen year old you accidentally punched him in the face between classes and he looked up from the ground with a bloody nose and broken glasses and stage-whispered ‘ _marry me you Amazonian goddess_ ’ in front of like a hundred and thirty other people. He got sent to the nurse and you got detention. I was there,” she shoots a cheshire grin at Pidge. “It was _perfect_. Your mom was really good at inadvertently breaking faces when she talked with her hands. Nasty right-hook, too.”

“I still have that hook,” Rebecca threatens harmlessly, nudging her glass toward the woman still holding the alcohol hostage. Bora rolls her eyes and pours out another shot before turning back to the pan on the stove.

“Just drink, woman. Let me cook in peace.”

 

Dinner is roasted potatoes and broccoli, French bread warmed to crispiness in the oven, and chicken in a thick, brilliant orange paprika sauce. The creamy sauce spills out over the plate and edges slowly toward the other items, forcing Pidge to dive in before her food gets soggy.

“After what happened to you and the other kids, I admit I have to wonder what would have happened if we had been there that night, if things hadn’t gone the way they did.”

Pidge glances up with a mouthful of chicken and potatoes, her puffed out cheeks drawing snorts of amusement from the older women.

“Those caves you and the other kids found, with that blue… lion ship, you weren’t the first to find them. Back before the new Galaxy academy was built out here it was a training site, and we’d often go camping way out in the desert as a team bonding kind of deal, sometimes for weeks on end. Charlotte always swore there was something out there… Something _else_ , anyway, apart from that whole E.T. deal.”

Bora sighs, something clearly tugging at her tongue that she refuses to let out. She continues anyway, obviously ignoring it as she takes a long sip of water.

“We always thought she was pulling our legs until one night four of us are out on a supply run for our last camping trip before the pre-launch crunch when she calls us all up screaming at the top of her lungs with this, this _ecstasy_ \- she found these caves with these strange lion carvings out in the desert, and she was showing us the markings with her camera and going on about how she knew there was _something_ out there. We packed our crap into the car as fast as we could and we hightailed it out there, but… it was raining. It never rained. And there was a coyote, or a dog maybe…  And your mom was on the bike with me when I went down… I was distracted that night- I never wipe out.”

There’s a thump under the table and Bora jolts, Rebecca shaking her head as she cuts in. The black-haired woman dips one arm under the table and Pidge suspects she’s rubbing at a freshly-kicked shin. “We were lucky Felicitie and Katya were in the car just behind us. Who knows when someone would have driven by; I got the brunt of it, but it could have gone much  _worse_.”

Her stomach grumbles eagerly and the Paladin reminds herself to eat _while_ she absorbs the story.

Hard to do, considering, but she forces herself to multi-task regardless.

“I walked away from it. Bumps and bruises. We weren’t so sure, for a while…  and Charlotte almost didn’t go with us.”

“When I woke up, she was snuggled up next to me in the hospital bed. Refused to leave my side. She was like that for two weeks before the Commander had to talk to her. Everyone had to. It was November; the launch was in four months…” Rebecca trails off, taking a careful bite of sauce-drenched broccoli as she mulls over her thoughts.

Bora sighs and pushes a cube of chicken around her plate. “It was a fight to talk any sense into her. She refused to go anywhere, insisted she’d stay behind…”

“She wasn’t backing down. It wasn’t until I grabbed her by the shirt and slapped her across the face, promising her I would never forgive her for throwing away what we had spent our _entire lives_ working toward that she relented. I used to wonder, if I hadn’t…” Rebecca sets her silverware on the plate and pinches the thin bridge of her nose with her fingers, squeezing it with a long, low sigh. “… But the past is the past. Nothing I can do about it now. She would have done the same to me at any rate.”

 

“I don’t know if you looked through that scrapbook, the blue one- it’s all out of order, anyway, but it’s mostly old pictures of Charlotte. I kept my hair short at school so people would stop mixing us up- before she went and got her damn nose pierced anyway,” the blonde chuckles.

Bora snorts. “Like what _you_ got pierced was any better.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Rebecca’s voice pops up an octave as she spears a potato wedge with needless aggression. “I brought it with in my suitcase if you want to look through it later. I know it’s not the same as actually knowing her, but I have stories to go with the pictures at least. And some videos and things saved on my laptop.”

Pidge smiles. “I’d like that.”

She’s still reconciling the fact that her mother has a dead sister that nobody ever told her about.

But she thinks she’s taking it well so far.

Of course after everything she’s been through over the past few months there’s probably not much that can shock her senseless.

Rebecca takes the plates from the table into the kitchen, adamantly insisting she makes herself useful at least a little. Bora lets her. She lets her eyes linger on the scars over the other woman’s legs, on the scars she knows are hidden elsewhere, by hair or by clothes. The guilt is painted in heavy strokes over her features.

 

“There were selfish motivations too, you know; we weren’t just letting you run around undercover for the hell of it because we knew your parents. We knew we couldn’t be the ones to let the truth about Kerberos get out- our careers would be _ruined_. We’d lose everything. If someone was going to tell the truth about what happened, it had to be an outsider. It had to be you. We weren’t going to let you take the fall, though-” Bora raises her hands placatingly for a moment as if she expects the young Paladin to snap at her, “we had fallout plans in place for when it came to light, and we’d make the Gunderson identity vanish like smoke and help you reintegrate without a hitch when it happened.”

Pidge swirls the coffee as she listens, her dessert plate balanced precariously on her knee as she curls into the armchair. The seasoned astronaut takes a deep swig from her mug and shakes her head as she sets it back on the low coffee table.

“Iverson was suspicious, but your records were good- Felicitie cleaned them up a little, made them better, polished your digital trail, but even without her help he didn’t have any proof of wrongdoing. Of course the fact that you took the bait every single goddamn time he brought Kerberos up meant that I had to gaslight the hell out of him like once a week. Seriously girl, I get that you’re young, but you have to be _careful_. Espionage is a long-term game.”

Pidge cocks one dry eyebrow at the astronaut. “And… _you_ would know?”

Bora laughs and rolls her eyes. “Trust me kid, you have no idea. The shit me and your mom pulled back in _ye olden days_ … I mean, there’s a reason the Galra who crash-landed here isn’t dead and preserved in formaldehyde right now.”

The teenager’s stomach knots up nervously and she wraps both of her hands around the mug, holding it closer to her chest.

“Do… do you guys know what the Galra _do_?”

Pidge has to ask. She has to _know_.

She has to know if they realize what kind of person they helped, what kind of person they saved. What kind of person they protected.

What kind of person young Bora Gyeong apparently fell in love with.

“We have an idea. The one we met was evidently part of a resistance movement, and he didn’t like talking too much about what he was fighting against. But ‘empire’ is pretty clear.”

“As is ‘megalomaniac with no concern for his own species currently in the middle of a nightmarish population crisis’ and ‘traitor to the entire universe and all sentient life’,” Rebecca nods as she takes a sip from her own mug and settles into a chair.

“True. I mean, we know _enough_.”

“And by ‘we’ you mean…?” Pidge trails off curiously.

“As far as we know just the members of the original Hecate Five. Hershel never knew about it, she was never there with us for it, and we never told anyone else; it was a secret we held close to the vest.”

“I never even told your father,” Rebecca says. “I certainly considered it, but bringing him in on the secret seemed like too much of a risk, even if he was more afraid of my newfound sisters than the government. Sam never was very good at keeping secrets; that man was always too honest, if such a thing can be said.”

There’s a knock at the door and Hailey springs up from where she’s curled at the foot of the couch, howling and barking and wagging her tail with as much effort as she can muster. The tortoiseshell cat curled up on the arm of the chair beside Pidge hisses but refuses to move and the teenager scratches her gently. The cat’s butt pops up in the air as the scratching fingers trail down over her spine.

Bora stretches her legs and steps over the dog to get to the door, stepping back as a loud voice with a warm undercurrent of Louisiana creole fills the entryway, rambling a million miles a minute.

“My wife’s _still_ pissed at me, you know. Not just at me, but you too. I was supposed to go straight to her father’s house where Max and Pancake had already started their vacation so we could all spend the summer together, because we haven’t done that in ages, and then you call while I’m still with my cousin in the hospital and tell me to get to your house, it’s a fucking _Code G_ but I haven’t heard anything besides the old usual to indicate a potential goddamn Code G on the ground so you had better have a good goddamn explanation because the wrath of Abigail Zawati is _not_ something I want to suffer right now- especially not for a false Code G because she still doesn’t know what that means and _do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a secret from that woman_ -”

“Felicitie, sugar, I love you, I do, but shut up and turn around.”

“… You have my complete and undivided attention.”

Felicitie Olivier stands in the hallway, her suitcase in one hand, the tag from the airport still attached at the handle, a bottle of wine in the other, and her face lights up when she sees Rebecca Holt waving to her from the living room. She shoves the bottle into her host’s hands and abandons her suitcase to go engulf the blonde in a smothering hug. She pulls back and sniffs her friend’s face dramatically.

“You’ve been drinking! And the good stuff, too,” she laughs, “I just hope you saved a little for me.”

“You know me, I’m a total lush,” Rebecca slurs her words jokingly and rolls her eyes as she pulls out her cell phone. “Nah, there’s still a ton in the kitchen. I’m not that much of a jerk.”

“I know, _my eye you would be_ ,” the woman grins, pushing a few of her tight shoulder-brushing black curls back over her ear. She glances over to the teenager she darted past and blinks for a moment as she looks between them. “I can’t believe I ever had to guess it was her. She’s your baby down to the damn eyelashes.”

“Eh, she’s got her father’s cheekbones,” Bora pops into the room with a handful of wine glasses. “Remember how he looked at the academy? Puberty took it’s time with him. You can already see them poking through, though.”

The newcomer tilts her head. “True.”

Olivier readjusts her glasses with one finger and Pidge finds herself almost instinctively moving to do the same, freezing when she realizes she has no glasses to push at.

Right, they’re still back on the Castle. On her desk in the Green Lion’s hangar. Underneath her paperwork and her notes on the Galra-infected crystal, right next to her laptop-

That was still on and running when she left.

Fuck.

There goes _that_ battery.

“You,” the woman gestures, and Pidge has distant flashbacks to her grueling programming classes. She shudders softly. “Your virus was clever, but not clever enough. The pestery little bugs were what helped me track it down at all. Not bad though.”

The Paladin snorts, settling deeper into the couch. “Petty revenge or total stealth- revenge is always sweeter.”

Felicitie makes a face like she _understands_. “And you named it ‘hell pigeon’ because…?”

Pidge shrugs. “Couldn’t think of anything cooler.” Coding the little demon pigeon gif hidden it in honestly took up most of her time writing it, but she couldn’t resist leaving a signature.

“Is that why my work computer kept bugging out and sometimes took a whole window when I closed a tab?”

“Among other little annoyances, yes,” Felicitie nods, looking just a little impressed as she glances over the teenager. She pops the wine bottle open and starts pouring it out into the glasses on the table as her host walks back out of the room. “I know you didn’t know we were watching out for you while you were doing your thing and looking for answers, but I really wish you hadn’t done that. Making it mine for data was enough- I lost way too many work e-mails because of that virus.”

“Sorry,” Pidge shrugs.

“Eh, I did something similar a long time ago, so I can’t really get too judgey with you. Nerds of a feather,” she laughs.

“To protect that Galra; Thace, right?”

Felicitie nearly spills out half the bottle in surprise and saves it by a hair. She sets the bottle down for a moment and nods with an incredulous look.

“Yeah, actually. They told you about him?”

“She recognized the language on my jacket,” Bora sighs from behind the teenager, startling her nearly out of her chair. The woman sets a small white piece of plastic shaped like a tampon, of all things, on the table in front of her. “Before we fixed his translator I was learning the language. We all were. That little flash drive is probably equivalent to a high school level ‘ _Intro to Galran_ ’ textbook. Mostly the basics- the alphabet, basic words, grammar, standard sentence structure; nothing too complex unfortunately. I don’t know how much you know yet so it might be useful to you. We could never use it at the Garrison when we started picking up signals- would have raised _way_ too many questions.”

“We didn’t need to in order to understand some of the spoken words, not that it helped, and we weren’t picking up anything we could read anyway. That looks like it’s on a different frequency.”

“Wait wait, signals?” Rebecca cuts in. The other women blanch noticeably.

“A few years after the new academy was built out in the desert to better survey the _mysterious crash site_ we started picking up signals from well-beyond Pluto. After a few more years, we started to recognize them.” Felicitie plucks one glass from the table and swirls it gently. “They were sporadic and mostly just static, but one day I heard a word, clear as day- ‘ _lah-vet_ ’. And then I knew. Katya was there for that, and we told Bora later. We didn’t pick up anything else for two years.”

Rebecca tilts her head, clearly waiting for an answer to her unspoken question the other women still hear.

“We weren’t on speaking terms when it happened,” Olivier sighs as she settles into the couch, kicking off her shoes and popping her bare feet onto the low table. “I didn’t think broaching even _that_ subject would be a… a good idea, at that point. You’re a terrifying woman when you want to be. We gave you your space like you asked and figured at some point in the future, if- _when_ we were able to reconcile, we’d tell you then. I guess it just kind of slipped our minds after all these years, with everything going on.”

The blonde nods and gnaws gently on her lower lip. “It was less of an ask than an order, but… yeah.” She raises her hazel eyes from her knees to look at her daughter and smiles wryly. “One part post-partum depression plus one part poorly managed pain and three parts unaddressed personal trauma, with a sprinkle of bitterness, makes for one _hell_ of an emotional Molotov cocktail.”

“I’m not sure about the Molotov but I do love a good cocktail,” a voice rumbles pleasantly from the front door, a soft thump and click echoing as it’s locked behind the speaker. Katya Petrovna strides over to the other women, hugging them all in turn and lingering on Rebecca for a moment before pulling a chair up to the setting. Her long auburn and silver hair is pulled into a loose braid behind her head and a few tendrils frame her angular face delicately as she turns to smile at the Paladin. “How are your stitches, Katherine?”

“Good,” Pidge exhales, a twinge of discomfort riding up her side as she readjusts in her chair. “Sore, but they _did_ jab a knife into me and yank out one of my internal organs, so I can’t exactly say I’m surprised. May that appendix rot in hell.”

Katya grins brightly and raises a glass from the table in a toast.

“May it _fester_. Tough little pigeon, aren’t you?”

Pidge raises her mug of now-cool coffee and angles her head toward her mother. “I learned from the best.”

“So,” the oldest woman says, taking a languid sip from the glass in her hand, humming pleasantly at the flavor, “let’s not beat around the bush; why don’t you tell us what happened to you out in the desert. We know everything up to the point where you and your friends find the cave with that giant mechanical… lion-thing, and nothing about what happened afterwards. It disappeared off our radars not long after it left atmosphere- and when it did, it was last registered at Kerberos. I assume you were all inside it at the time?”

Pidge wiggles herself in deeper on the couch and tucks her feet snugly beneath herself.

It’s a long story. She may as well be comfortable for it.

Katya evidently takes Pidge’s delay as hesitation and smiles softly, cool blue eyes gentle as she gestures around the room.

“I can promise that everything you say stays in this room. Nobody else will ever hear this story unless you want them to.”

The other women around the coffee table nod.

 

“And now I’m here,” Pidge yawns, cracking her neck as she glances over to the clock on the wall; it’s just past midnight. Her story, which she _valiantly_ resisted the urge to embellish, took well over an hour to relay, peppered with every single detail the Paladin thought might be valuable that could dredge up from her memories.

The four women at the table around her are staring mutely, their eyes wide and the glasses in front of them or in their hands long forgotten. Olivier finds her voice first, pursing her lips in confusion.

“Wait, there’s one thing I don’t think I understand-”

“ _Why did none of you tell me about Shiro_?”

All the heads around the table turn toward Rebecca’s delicately soft voice. Confusion and pain swim across her features, an expression of downright betrayal twisting at her face. She holds one hand over her left side in an iron death-grip, in the same spot Pidge saw Bora’s tattoo. She clenches it into a fist around her sweatshirt.

“Why didn’t _anyone_ tell me about Shiro?”

“Rebecca, we didn’t-”

“You could have mentioned at some point that the pilot of the Kerberos mission not only _survived_ , but that he made it back to Earth _alive_. You never told me… You never said that _it_ was a possibility. None of you bothered to mention it, or even that _they_ were a possibility…”

“We didn’t know… We only knew there were tremors, screams… It could have been so many things. It was later when our out-going calls were more monitored we had an idea… we… none of us were even there that night… we were told, later…”

Her voice is barely above a whisper but it is ice cold as it suffocates the room. She rounds on Bora, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“After everything- after _every single thing I’ve done for you_ \- we were sisters once, what else are you not telling me? What _else_ are you hiding?”

Her empty glass slams down on the table and she forces herself to stand, furious tremors racking through her body as she looks at every woman at the table in turn, finally settling again on the woman beside her. Her face twists over in disgust and she shoves herself past the table, walking toward the back door of the house with rushed, long strides.

The glass sliding door slams shut behind her and rattles in its frame.

Pidge gapes quietly at the other three still sitting at the table as they sink in their seats; Felicitie is pinching the bridge of her nose in her hand, fluttering brown eyes watery as she swallows a hiccup. Petrovna is for the first time since Pidge has met her slouching, hunched forward, her hands pushing her hair away from her face as her head sinks heavily toward the table with her eyes clenched tightly shut. And Gyeong is chewing on her lower lip, brows pressing together and tears already spilling over her cheeks as she looks anywhere but at anyone else.

“Someone should…” Felicitie sighs, glancing between the two other women. They hold the briefest of silent conversations among themselves with only their eyes and their expressions.

Gyeong is ultimately the one who rises with a shaky nod and she takes a shuddering breath, following out the back door with her arms wrapped around her shoulders. She looks almost afraid as she slides the door shut behind herself.

A flicker of a thought comes to Pidge’s mind unbidden, from somewhere within her in the narrow gulf of space between her and the Green Lion, that space with blurred edges where she’s not sure where either one of them starts or ends or even exists at all within it.

_Furious water can overwhelm another element. Fire is right to fear._

The thought slips away as soon as it arrives and slides free like water. And it comes as if it were a thought of her own, not something her Lion whispered in her head.

But… it…

It would make sense, wouldn’t it.

The arrangement is so perfect, so obvious.

She can’t possibly have been the only person in the universe in the last _ten thousand years_ who was worthy of the Green Lion.

Hell, she can’t even be the only person on this _planet_.

She’s just the one lucky bastard for whom every single star in the cosmos aligned.

If Lance hadn’t been there that night on the roof, hadn’t been there in the cave the next morning, would she have ever…? Would any of them…?

And when she looks at the other women around the table and spots the row of little peridot earrings catching the light from their spot nestled in Olivier’s ears she gets the distinct feeling she knows who would have been in her place, had things not gone the way they did. She can see that potential, faded and forgotten, and she knows that Green can see it too as the Lion retreats and holds herself at a mental arms-length from the Paladin. Geeks of a feather…

It’s only because of what happened to her mother…

Had her mother not almost died that night… Had her mother not almost lost the use of her legs forever, had she made it to the campsite and followed her sister into the Blue Lion’s cave…

The five would almost certainly have vanished to a distant world across the cosmos, Allura and Coran would have been awoken, Pidge might never have been born-

Pidge might never have been born.

She takes that thought in her teeth and shakes it until she’s quite sure it can’t fight back, and she buries it as deeply as she can before Green notices.

She refuses to even consider…

Felicitie’s voice pulls her back out of her own head.

“You said it… the Lion talks?”

Pidge pulls her legs up onto the chair and tugs them into her chest, fighting through the discomfort. “Yeah. She talks to me. We’ve got this weird magi-tech mind link going, so we can feel and hear each other all the time, within a certain range apparently, and we can see through each other’s eyes- I’m still not sure how _any of it_ works yet. But we’re bonded in the brain. Somehow.”

Olivier whips out her phone and immediately dials a number, a curious expression on her face as she wipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Markus? Hey, yeah, I need you to do a thing real quick. You know the Vessel? Yeah, I need you to stand in front of it real quick. In front of the windows, yeah. Yeah, no bring that, that’s cool. It’s like you and a skeleton staff it doesn’t matter, nobody cares. None of them are even in the same wing right now, nobody will see you. No, I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s like midnight, man, _just do it_. Don’t make me pull rank.”

Olivier looks at Pidge and pulls her lower lip into her teeth as she covers the receiver.

“Tell me what you see.”

_Ah_.

She wants the Paladin to prove it. Fair enough. Pidge probably wouldn’t be so willing to buy it wholesale either if she were in Olivier’s shoes.

_Nerds of a feather_.

She dropkicks that thought out of her brain without hesitation.

Pidge closes her eyes, sliding comfortably into the Green Lion’s headspace as she rumbles in welcome and surprise. She furrows her brows as she scans the space in front of the Lion.

“A man in a lab coat with a cup of what I’m assuming is coffee and a cell phone in his hand.”

“What color is the cup?”

“Blue? No, it’s got writing; blue and white? It’s hard to read at this distance but the cup is blue and the writing is white.”

A delighted grin spreads over the woman’s face.

Pidge fidgets uncomfortably in her seat as she starts to feel out the Green Lion’s form again, their proximity reminding her of the things the Lion couldn’t repair yet. Distance seems to make her awareness of the Lion’s form weaker- she’d forgotten the pain. The tail is still broken, and there’s still a deep throbbing tenderness in it that makes the Paladin cringe and fidget in the chair.

She leans forward and places her hands on the table in front of her and rolls her shoulders. Her eyes snap open a moment later when the man in front of Green screams and drops his mug on the floor.

Felicitie murmurs rapidly into her phone- “Markus, what happened?”

Pidge closes her eyes and listens, filling in the gaps for herself. The man is on the edges of her vision and she stops herself from turning to watch, listening instead as he screams into the receiver.

“ _It moved Olivier, it fucking moved you said it was safe_!”

“It is safe, honestly man,” the woman rolls her eyes.

“The legs _moved_! The front legs!”

Felicitie is practically _vibrating_ in her seat, brown eyes glittering as she looks at the Paladin again.

“You’ve been a _great_ help, Markus. You love bear claws, right?”

“ _What the fuck do pastries_ -!?”

“Have a good night,” she laughs as she hangs up, turning off her phone before it can ring. She sets it on the coffee table and edges away from it like it’s radioactive. “Oh yeah, he’s going to kick my ass tomorrow… Oh wait, no, I have a flight at six. Ha! I’ll already be at an airport across the country when he gets off shift. _Suck it_.”

Katya looks like she’s torn between rolling her eyes so hard they fall out of her head and laughing alongside her fellow former astronaut. It’s an expression Pidge is painfully familiar with, and her heartstrings knot up as she sees Shiro’s familiar exasperation in the Russian woman’s face.

“It’s late,” Katya announces as she rises to her feet. “You should shower up, get some rest. You’ll have a long day ahead of you tomorrow. They’ll have a lot of questions.”

Felicitie rolls her shoulders as she stands, wandering slowly toward the back door of the house, squeezing the taller woman’s shoulder gently as she passes.

“You won’t have to answer any of them in order to get to your Lion. They still think your brother is holed up in there, so they’ll bring you in regardless, though they may have you sign some confidentiality paperwork.” Katya hesitates, like she’s not sure what to say next. “You’ll be leaving tomorrow, then?”

Pidge’s stomach sinks like a stone and Hailey rests her head in the girl’s lap, thumping her tail slowly against the ground as she scratches the dog’s ears. “Most likely…”

“Alright,” she says, “I’ll see if I can’t make it easier for you.”

She leans over and gives Pidge a gentle hair ruffle when the teenager tilts her head in confusion, giggling softly when Pidge purrs despite her attempt at a glower.

“Go. Go wash up.”

 

When the teenager finishes her shower her mother is outside the door waiting for her, and engulfs the still half-damp teenager in a surprise hug and gently readjusts the neck of her oversized bathrobe when she pulls away.

“I’m sorry, it’s just so much…” she sighs. “I can’t even… I shouldn’t have snapped at anyone like that. I should have understood. And _you_ …”

She brushes a tendril of hair back behind the Paladin’s ear.

“I knew in my heart you were going to leave- _I knew_ , somehow, and after tonight now _I know_ , and so soon, but I just don’t think I’m ready. It seems like everyone leaves. You’re the only one who’s come back,” she sighs, a watery smile tugging at her lips. “After what you just told us, how can I know… how…”

“I won’t leave you behind, mom, not if you don’t want me to.” Pidge doesn’t know where it comes from, but she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t care. She’s going to make that offer and stand by it no matter what anyone else says. She’ll fight everyone to stand by it. She owes her mother this.

The _universe_ owes her mother this.

She squares her shoulders and looks her mother in the eye and she lets the words come out.

“You can come with me. You don’t have to stay behind, here, just _waiting_ for me to come home. You can come with me. We can find dad and Matt together-  _you can be there_.”

Rebecca stares with wide eyes, her mouth twisting as she struggles for words.

“You were meant to fly, mom, beyond this planet, beyond this _solar system_. You were meant to _fly_. And you still can, kind of,” she breathes, a sound between a hiccup and a laugh slipping out of her burning throat. “You don’t have to stay here.”

Rebecca pushes her forehead into her daughter’s and cradles the back of her head, threading fingers through the damp hair and scratching softly. She huffs softly as Pidge purrs at her with watery eyes.

“I would wait ten thousand years for you to come back to me,” she sniffles. “And I will, if I have to...”

“ _I can’t make you do that for me_ -”

Rebecca steels her features, her voice shaking despite herself. “I _will_ wait. I still have things to do here. Your friend’s families need to know… And the _Galra-_  we need to be ready. People need to know. The others and I have a responsibility. I will wait for you, and I will do my _best_ to make sure this is still a world worth coming home to.” She leans back to bump their heads together gently. “I will wait for you, and I will wait for Sam and Matt. I have no doubt in my heart that you will find them.”

“Mom, _please_ ,” Pidge whispers through the burning in her throat. “Please don’t…”

“Maybe I was meant to fly once. But it’s _your_ turn now.” She laughs through the tears spilling over her cheeks. She holds her daughter’s face in her hands and thumbs at the saltwater spilling over. “I’d tell you to make me proud, but you already have. I’m so proud of you Pigeon.”

She ruffles the Paladin’s hair roughly as she pulls herself away, plastering a tender smile over her face and rubbing roughly at her own eyes.

“Now, I’d like to have a conversation with this Princess if you don’t mind. I am your mother, after all; I need to make sure she’ll take care of you.”

 

The armor is as comfortable as it’s ever been, sitting like a thick second skin on the teenage Paladin’s body.

She doesn’t need to wear all of it, really, just the helmet and the gauntlet; hell, just the gauntlet would be enough, but she’d rather wear it anyway. It feels like it’s been too long.

And the looks on the faces of the women around her as she stretches her arms out behind her head in the armor and straightens out her spine like Allura taught her do _wonders_ for her ego. Apparently the weight of ‘Paladin Posture’ is a real thing.

Rebecca leans into Bora’s side as the other woman drapes one arm over her shoulders. Felicitie hands the Paladin her inactive bayard back before curling into Bora’s other side on the couch, eyes lighting up in curious wonder when Pidge wills the dagger to manifest. She resists the impulse to show off (she isn’t _Lance_ , after all) and lets the bayard dissolve entirely in a flash of light into the storage on her thigh.

She takes the seat Katya was in earlier and, even though she knows the contact is purely a matter of will, taps two fingers against the side of her helmet.

“Allura?”

She waits several seconds, one leg bouncing nervously. Katya wanders back into the room with a coffee of her own, clearly having given up on sleep a long time ago, and settles herself on the arm of the couch beside Rebecca.

“Allura? Are you there?”

“ _Yes_! Yes, I’m here, Pidge, sorry,” the Altean suddenly huffs breathlessly, “I was occupied with something, I wasn’t wearing my earrings, I didn’t hear you but the mice did, I’m sorry. _Are you alright_?”

“I’m fine, Princess, I’m good. How’re you?”

Allura yawns and Pidge gets the distinct impression she just woke her up. “I’m as alright as I can be. Why are you calling?”

“I have some people who’d like to talk to you, on behalf of our species. And, uh, my mother. Mostly it’s my mom. My mom wants to talk to you.”

A few seconds pass in strange silence.

“Allura?”

“Yes, of course,” Allura says, her voice a half-octave higher than expected. In the distance the Paladin can hear the soft _thap_ of bare feet on metal and she suspects the Princess is moving toward the Bridge. “Of course, I would be honored. And the others are?”

“Practically family,” Pidge smiles, not looking up. “My accidental sabbatical down here has been… educational. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Am I on speaker yet?”

“No.”

“Then no. I’m sure nobody will notice that I’m still wearing my nightgown. It’s a rather nice one, if I say so myself,” she chuckles, and Pidge stifles a giggle with the back of her hand. She’s seen Allura’s nightdresses and her casual clothes- and even those are still the heights of elegance. She has no doubt Allura will still look perfectly royal having just rolled out of bed.

If only the Green Paladin could be so lucky. But alas, the Holt genes guarantee that for at least an hour after rising she looks like a warm zombie. She generally acts like one too.

“Alright, I’m ready.”

Pidge sets her helmet on the table behind her, turns, curves her arm in front of her and settles it on the back of the chair, tapping at the back of the gauntlet wrist to bring the display screen up.

Pidge is not at all surprised by the elegant figure Allura cuts in her shimmering dusty rose nightgown, her winter hair snugly braided in a crest over her skull and twisting to settle in one long tail over her bare shoulder. The fabric catches the light as she moves and flashes of faint golden brocade in a pattern the Paladin suspects is floral shine as she raises one hand in greeting.

Even fresh out of bed she looks like she spent an hour and a half getting ready.

But the little details give her away, when Pidge looks closer. Details nobody else might notice or know to look for.

The faint crescent bags under her eyes, darker and more tender than the surrounding skin, the tightly clipped nails (the Princess only ever kept them that short when she was stressed), the soft sag tugging at the tips of her ears, and the dulled color of her under-eye markings- normally the pink was radiant, glowing, but now it’s faded and closer to the color of her clothes than the almost neon shade it normally is.

Pidge hears a soft thump behind herself and can see when she looks at the screen that Medusa has jumped onto the coffee table between the Paladin and the women.

“Oh _my stars_ what in the universe is that animal?”

The cat chortles brightly and settles on the table with no regard for anyone else, curling her tail delicately over her paws as she bends down to lick at her distended belly. Allura’s eyes sparkle as she leans closer to the screen.

“It’s adorable, _I want thirty_.”

Pidge laughs. “It’s called a cat, and they eat mice.”

Allura cringes and from off-screen Pidge can hear a chorus of distant, horrified squeaking.

“Perhaps not, then.” She blinks, noticing the bemused women on the couch and clears her throat. Her ears flush several shades as she returns to a more formal posture. “Greetings. I am Princess Allura of Altea and Starbound of the Lions, though I imagine my Green Paladin has already told you as much.”

Pidge can see in the screen the women behind her hesitating, as if they’re not sure who should speak. Katya gives Rebecca’s shoulder an affirming squeeze and the woman adjusts her sweatshirt before rising. She’s hardly dressed for an audience with royalty but she acts as if she does not care.

“I am Rebecca Selina Holt, the mother to your Green Paladin.” She settles on the table beside the cat and rubs Medusa’s ears gently, spine stiff and posture surprisingly refined as she stares into the screen. “I understand my daughter has become a champion- a _warrior_ of yours, but I need to make a request.”

Allura blinks in surprise. “Of- of course. For the mother of a Paladin _, anything_. Anything at all I have the power to arrange, I will.”

“Bring her home to me.” Rebecca’s hazel eyes burn with a warm golden fire. “I ask that one day you return her to me. Have her as long as you need- I understand that she is precious to you and your fight, to the universe itself, but when the time comes I ask that you let me have my daughter back. _Please_.”

Allura purses her lips, a strangely pained smile tugging at them as she bows her head slightly. Her voice adopts a ritual formality.

“Of course. This I will promise, before a Paladin of Voltron and before an audience that I may be bound to it; _Mother of my Paladin- on my Castle, on my Crown, and on my very quintessence, on a day I do not yet know I will return your daughter to you. I cannot promise she will be the same child you once cradled in your arms, but she will forever be the woman you raised her to be. From now until that day, Rebecca Selina Holt, this I now decree_ ,” she glances up through her lashes and smiles gently, letting the formality drop as she finishes on a tender note, “you _will_ have your daughter back.”

“Thank you,” Rebecca smiles faintly, holding her hands to her chest. “Thank you.”

The blonde moves to gently tousle her child’s messy hair and excuses herself suddenly with a soft murmur about needing a glass of water.

“Have you found anyone else yet?” Pidge murmurs, filling the strange silence. The women still in the room seem oddly lost for words, all things considering.

“No, unfortunately.”

“How’s Keith doing?” She sees Bora perk up slightly behind her but she shrugs it off.

“Stable, and improving still, which is far more than I can say for the Castle right now.”

Katya and Bora turn to each other in confusion, and Felicitie pipes up from the couch; “What did she say?”

Allura furrows her brows for a moment before she sighs and rolls her eyes in frustration, looking for something. “It appears the Castle translators aren’t working now _\- Coran, when you’re not busy I need you on the Bridge_.” She pushes two fingers into her temple, shaking her head.

“But how can I still…?” Pidge’s brows furrow and her Lion cuts in with a humored tone.

**_I am versatile, cub. I have been translating for as long as we have been together. From first moment you knew me._ **

Right. Duh.

“Nevermind.”

A grease-smeared Coran pops into view a few seconds later to everyone’s surprise and Pidge waves with her free hand, grinning when he gives her an enthusiastic two-hand wave back before bowing over the control panel, ears twitching erratically. “I’m afraid it will be a few minutes Princess but I’ll try to fix it as quickly as possible. It’s probably an easy fix- this used to happen _all_ the time. Usually some loose wire in the central panel.” Allura nods and turns back toward the screen.

“Pidge, would you please serve as our translator?”

“Of course, Princess; I’m afraid the translators aren’t working, everyone,” she glances over her shoulder, “I can relay any questions you have.” The women behind her nod in understanding.

“Is there anything anyone would like to ask?”

Pidge relays the question.

Bora asks in a low voice so softly the Paladin almost doesn’t hear it; “Is he alright?”

Pidge hesitates, smiling awkwardly at Allura before turning to look from the corner of her eye at the woman. Bora’s hands are folded nervously in her lap. Felicitie nods at the woman beside her, and Katya scoots closer on the couch.

“You asked her how your friend, Keith, was, and the translator stopped working before she replied. Is he alright?”

The Paladin exhales softly and nods. “He’s stable; he’s in a healing pod right now.”

“Why is he in one?” The woman’s voice has a barely controlled undercurrent of _fear_ that prickles the teenager’s curiosity and churns her stomach. Pidge relays the question. Even though she knows, vaguely, she thinks her nightmare would not be the right thing to describe.

The Altean tilts her head. “Who-?” Her eyes widen suddenly and her ears droop. “Oh, _oh_ … I’m afraid that’s not something I think she needs to hear.”

“Nevermind,” Bora exhales before the teenager can relay the answer, lifting herself on unsteady legs. “I- I don’t know why I asked. Sorry.”

The astronaut carries herself out of the room with a nervous, rushed stride. Olivier scrambles off the couch after her. Katya’s shoulder’s droop and she centers herself in the frame behind the Paladin, sitting stiffly on the table.

“When do you need my goddaughter?”

Pidge blinks at the flutter in her chest, letting the strange interaction with Gyeong settle in the back of her mind, and she translates. Allura breathes and a mouse wanders into frame to demand she pet it, and she speaks carefully as she scratches it behind one delicate ear.

“As immediately as possible. I would take her now if I could.”

Katya frowns when given the translation. Allura recognizes the expression and continues with a slight rush to her voice.

“I apologize for taking her so soon-”

“Can’t I wait?” Pidge asks. She knows the answer. She knows.

But she has to ask.

She has to.

Allura sighs and her shoulders droop with invisible weight. Coran in the background is moving slower, and Pidge knows he’s listening.

“I need you to understand Pidge _, I need you_. Keith is still in a pod until only stars know when, he’s stable but that’s all we have, and the Red Lion still isn’t even patched up yet so it’s _beyond_ out of commission; I need you. I need everyone, and right now I need _you_ the most. At the absolute least you and I both know the Castle alone does not have the kind of offensive capabilities I need right now if… if…”

Pidge knows. She knows she has a responsibility. She knows she has a job to do, a role to play. Castles need guardians. And she’s a Paladin in fighting shape again.

Or, as her side twinges with discomfort, mostly in shape.

Part of her is stubborn to a fault, and her roots have already started to set in. She’s not easy to uproot once she settles in. She never has been.

But she still _knows_. So she tears her roots from the soil without mercy and wills them to wither.

“I know Princess. How much longer do I have?”

“Twenty hours? Twenty-four? I’m not sure, there are still so many issues we keep running into, it keeps changing. It could be as soon as maybe thirteen, as many as thirty. The wormhole technology is having all sorts of issues so I can’t just pop over in an hour unfortunately. My last emergency jump a few days ago must have made a mess of something. It’s sheer luck I jumped to such a close star system.”

Thirteen hours.

It’s a crunch, but she can work with that.

It’s nearly two am now.

She can work with that.

“There’s a gas giant with a large belt of rings in this solar system, I can meet you there. My species isn’t really, uh, aware of other life forms out in the universe as a _fact_ yet. The people here with me are an exception.”

There’s a pause as Allura dips off-screen to check over the deep space scanners and the starmaps. It takes several seconds as Pidge assumes she’s zooming in to examine the solar system better. She pops back into frame with a tight frown.

“That’s rather far from the planet that you’re on, isn’t it?”

“And you and I both know the Green Lion can cross that distance in a tick and a half if I ask her. ‘Far’ is relative.”

Pidge realizes she hasn’t translated any of that. Not that she’d _want_ to translate the conversation she just had.

And judging from the look she’s getting, she hasn’t been speaking English anyway.

She reaches out to Green quietly, mentally nuzzling the Lion in thanks. Green nuzzles back with a drowsy hum.

Katya leans over to touch Pidge’s shoulder; “I have some errands to run. Watch out for them, will you?”

Pidge purses her lips and nods. The Russian woman smiles and hugs her gently, pulling back with an expression of concern and warmth painted over her features.

“You’re very brave. But don’t carry all this on your own, and don’t be afraid to lean on your friends. They’ll need you just as much as you need them.” She sighs. “Independence is not a trait befitting a lioness any more than a wolf. I know you’re your mother’s child. Don’t push them away.”

The Paladin gets the distinct feeling that speech wasn’t _just_ meant for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, dead twin. Who else was expecting that? I was hoping it wouldn’t be completely out of left field.
> 
> I dunno about anyone else but writing the dialogue between Pidge and her mom, about that whole ‘come with me’ thing, that made my cry. I usually reread everything out loud to check for any spelling problems or weird word choices as part of my editing process, and rereading it out loud the first time made me cry even worse. Did anyone else cry there? Was that just a me thing? I almost ended this chapter on that note, actually, but I thought that might be cruel.
> 
> As for Pidge’s little ‘might never have been born’ idea, I think she still would have. Rebecca was a headstrong grown-ass woman with a child and a spouse who would have been left behind and I can’t see her not going back for them, even if it meant disobeying direct orders. Pidge would have ultimately been born and raised in the Castle then so she would likely be a tech gremlin nightmare for any would be invaders.
> 
> And I’m super positive we still would have gotten the other canon Paladins on later as Apprentices- Shiro likely still as an escaped Galra prisoner, and maybe Lance and Hunk and Keith from a return to Earth mission where one or all of them proves themselves capable to a Lion during some big ceremony blah blah blah. I have too many ideas.
> 
> Also it feels incredibly weird to have so much writing and time dedicated to characters that literally do not exist in canon. Like why should anybody care about these characters? Hell, why should I?
> 
> Given what I implied/said in 'The Apprentice and the Morningstar' I am fully aware of the contradiction I’ve created here by not having the potential Red and Blue Paladins be partners. I think platonic soulmates would be a VERY rare thing, or it could have developed into something romantic, polyamory is totally a thing, but who knows, not me, I don’t care I’ve already committed to this Lion arrangement and I have an aesthetic going damnit.
> 
> Also the would-have-been Paladins thing was never part of my plan in the early stages, it just kind of happened organically.
> 
> If there's something I didn't explain properly, by all means, I will try my best to answer questions if you ask. Unless the answer is spoilery, in which case I'll just smile and wave.
> 
> Seriously though this chapter consumed me for the past couple days, it's a good thing my partner is understanding because I stopped replying to texts for two whole days. Every free minute went to working on this.


	15. Horizons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gazing out over the old horizons and the new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry I didn’t reply to any comments on the last update, but every time I tried my brain just went :D for twenty minutes. I can’t find the words most of the time and I don’t think I’m going to try to anymore but believe me when I say I adore every single one of you, and your comments and everything makes my day in the best possible way. I can’t think of a word to describe how you all make me feel and I wish I could.
> 
> Seriously, I love you, and I hope you keep enjoying this.
> 
> Warning for anyone who might appreciate it: this chapter has some mentions of unplanned pregnancy.

Nobody sleeps that night.

Allura and Pidge eventually part ways with tired smiles, and Coran makes sure to tell the Paladin he can’t wait to see her again before the call ends.

Pidge spends the rest of the night tucked snugly into her mother’s side, wrapped in blankets and pajamas and staring up into the star-streaked sky of her homeworld from a nest of pillows.

At some point Bora joins them on the roof and she leans into Rebecca’s free side.

They talk about constellations, about the days and nights they spent staring up as children, about the days and nights they spend staring back down as adults at the fragile, frighteningly delicate little world they were born on.

Pidge relays her more exciting adventures, the less life-threatening ones. She was never quite the storyteller her dad was, but she thinks she does a good job of it. The fascination of her audience is something she tries not to attribute entirely to her subject matter, and she lets herself get lost in the happier stories and the funnier moments.

Bora talks about her more interesting missions, the ones that didn’t have people she loved die in horrible freak accidents. She talks about her Galra lover, too, and asks Pidge to keep her ear to the ground for his name. If Pidge can find him, use Bora’s name; hell, even her own since he knew her mother, maybe he can help. Somehow.

Rebecca tells Pidge about Charlotte. She tells her daughter everything she remembers. Bora brings them the scrapbook from inside the house and they all go over the pictures together, lighting them up with her cell phone as she describes everything from the time her sister once shaved off half of one of her eyebrows when she was twelve for petty revenge to the time her sister roundhouse kicked a man in the face for groping Rebecca in a bar. Not that they were supposed to be in a bar at the time, they were only eighteen, but celebrating teenagers and fake ID’s go together like peanut butter and jelly…

Eventually they all round back to more tender subjects.

Pidge describes how she obtained her Lichtenburg scar, flexing her hand as she remembers the pain she felt when she let impulse take over and jammed her bayard into the machine. She had been a Paladin all of a few days when the Castle had been taken. She was sleep-deprived and terrified, her brain was a mess, and she doesn’t stop herself from describing any of it this time. Not the part where she was running for her life, which was all of it, not the part where she was shot in the jetpack and nearly went into a freefall into the shaft; Not even the part where she had tried to kill someone- the part where she, technically, succeeded in killing someone.

Even if she didn’t deliver the fatal blow, Rover did what she programmed it to do; protect her, even when protecting her meant killing itself and someone else.

Rebecca kisses the crown of her head and tells her that she was so very brave. She did what she had to do. If she hadn’t, things would have been so much worse.

Bora describes the fatal Hecate I mission. How she had to choose between trying to save Charlotte and guaranteeing the survival of herself, Olivier and Petrovna.

She couldn’t make that choice, even though nobody else was able to do so. Hershel was already gone, the Commander was unconscious, and Felicitie was bleeding and struggling to get the rapidly leaking O2 to stay inside where they needed it. Debris was everywhere, noise, chaos, and Charlotte was outside, dying, they were all dying, and Bora couldn’t decide what to do. Her instincts were telling her to put everyone at risk, possibly kill everyone by trying to save her, and her rational mind was telling her to let her friend go, save at least some of the crew. She couldn’t choose. And when she said as much…

Charlotte made the choice for her.

Even the people who were on board don’t know why the cargo module bringing them back to the main ship suddenly tore itself nearly in half. There was no clear rhyme or reason to what happened that day. If anyone’s figured it out since they certainly never told her.

Bora found after that day she stopped listening to anything but her instincts.

Rebecca doesn’t say anything, but she holds her lips to the other woman’s scalp and rubs her shoulders, gently humming a lullaby Pidge recognizes from all the nightmares she used to have as a kid. She commits the tune to memory- she spent too many nights on the Castle struggling to remember the sound that always brought her peace on terrible nights.

Dawn comes over the horizon as a welcome surprise. Streaks of warm orange and vibrant pink paint the sky above them, hiding the distant starlight for another day, and Rebecca points out Venus glittering on the horizon just before the morning light conceals it too.

 

When they come back inside Hailey is curled protectively around Medusa and the pair of them are sleeping soundly on the couch.

“Who wants breakfast?” Rebecca announces as she heads toward the kitchen, cooing softly at the pets as she walks by. The dog opens one eye and her tail thumps happily (she _knows_ the word ‘breakfast’) but she stays curled protectively around the pregnant cat.

“I don’t think you should be the one to cook,” Bora says, clearly disagreeing with her own statement as she leans against the counter contentedly, “but I suppose if you’re offering-”

“Wait, no, let me guess,” Rebecca snickers as she pushes two fingers into either temple, humming and hemming and hawing. “… Egg rolls and ginger ale, right?”

“You read my mind,” Bora grins shamelessly as the other woman gags playfully, hip-checking her out of the way as she wanders over to the freezer.

“You really kept doing that? Really?”

Pidge glances between the two women and shrugs dramatically as she seats herself at the counter, raising one eyebrow in obvious demand for an explanation.

“Eventually the weird hangover cure we invented just became breakfast.”

“It worked really well, _somehow_ , if you had this one specific brand of eggrolls,” Rebecca sighs as she pulls out a box of frozen waffles. She shakes it and frowns at the sound. “If you’re still hiding your weed in empty waffle boxes I will kick your ass from here to Rio. _You have no idea how much I want waffles right now_.”

Bora socks the blonde in the arm.

“Do you seriously want your daughter to think I do drugs?”

“She was a terrible influence on me,” Rebecca grins, pulling out the mostly empty bag of frozen waffles from the box with a pout.

“Really? _I_ was the bad influence? I’m sorry, who was the ringleader of all our teenage escapades again? I could have sworn I was just _the getaway driver_. Also we never did drugs, your mother is a liar,” Bora laughs.

Rebecca’s expression is shameless. “Yeah, we’d just get plastered on cheap and dubiously acquired alcohol on the weekends instead. You know, like _normal_ kids.”

 

“Remember that one house party when we were like seventeen? The one where some dude honked my tit so you kicked him in the dick so hard he pissed blood for like a week? _I ran into him in the store the other day_ ,” the astronaut laughs, stirring the whisk through the pancake batter slowly. Bacon sizzles on the stove next to her as she leans back against the counter. “Apparently his kid is going to the academy next year, so he moved out here.”

“ _No_ , really?”

“He’s still afraid of you, you know.”

“As he damn well should be,” Rebecca preens as she pours out three cups of coffee. “He’s lucky he’s got a kid out of that thing at all… Did you run into him with your car?”

“I was on the bike at the time,” Bora pouts sarcastically, “so no. But apparently he’s reformed or some shit, _I dunno_. In any case, he kept looking around like he expected you to pop out of the produce section and kick him again.”

“If I had been there I might have.”

Bora sighs through the smile pulling at her lips. “Yeah, of the two of us, you were _clearly_ the worse influence. I just wanted to get laid and ride my bike, and use my bike to get laid, you were the one starting all the fights and sneaking us out of and into various locations at odd hours. And you were the one with the connections for fake ID’s and alcohol. _I was the good kid_. Me and Charlotte were just the victims of your wild schemes.”

“Yeah,” Rebecca trails off, bemused, “but you love me.”

“Ugh, _I do_ ,” she grimaces as she starts pouring out the batter onto a hot griddle. “ _I do_. I hate you so much.”

 

“They still make these?” Rebecca asks as she handles the empty package, the contents sizzling in hot sesame oil on the stove next to the pancakes and bacon.

“Yeah, the company is actually doing really well. I think they just rolled out a shrimp eggroll too. But the pork will always hold a special place in my heart,” she laughs, clicking her tongs and turning the eggrolls in the pan carefully.

“That’s awesome. Thought I can’t say I’m surprised, you and me and Charlotte basically kept them in business single-handedly for how many years?”

Pidge watches the exchange warmly, the light dialogue comfortable even if it’s still strange, knowing everything she’s just learned. It’s a lot to absorb in one night.

It hits the teenager like a ton of bricks.

“Holy shit mom you have a tattoo?!”

Rebecca and Bora glance at each other for a moment in quiet surprise, bursting out into laughter a heartbeat later. She tugs up the side of her sweatshirt to reveal a nearly identical design to the one Bora has. The watercolor is in vibrant shades of blue, but the eyes are a downright radiant shade of yellow that glows in the early morning light. There’s mottled scarring along her spine and she tugs the fabric back down once her daughter has seen enough of the design.

“That’s why I wore one-piece suits in the pool.”

“Coming from the girl who used to skinny dip and sunbathe naked on the roof, _that_ is a surprise,” Bora chuckles. Rebecca flushes and punches her friend lightly.

 

Pidge stuffs three whole pieces of bacon into her mouth at once as her period hunger holds her stomach hostage, pinching another fistful from the plate stacked in the middle of the table. Rebecca rolls her eyes fondly and gestures with her fork around the house.

“How long have you lived out here?”

“Three and a half years. Almost four. I kicked around the idea for a while, but when it went back on the market I figured ‘why not’. Lotta space for one person, but…” Bora shrugs ineffectively.

Rebecca mumbles softly, mouthing ‘four years’ over and over again until her eyes snap wide open in realization.

“Four years? That was when…?”

“I found out, not when it happened. That was about nine years ago.”

The blonde’s face crumbles. “I’m so sorry. And of course, how would you have known…”

Pidge glances between the two curiously, cheeks puffed out like a squirrel.

“Katherine Valentina Holt, take smaller bites,” her mother chastises through her giggles. “Honestly, you weren’t raised by wolves.”

Bora blinks and her face softens as she looks between them. “That’s sweet.”

Pidge tilts her head as she swallows her mouthful of food.

Her mother sighs warmly and reaches for her mug of coffee. “Charlotte always said if she had a daughter she wanted to name her Valentina, for the cosmonaut, the first woman in space. My parents thought it was a nice gesture, giving you that name. I wasn’t sure… But I think she’d like it too.”

 

Pidge readjusts the sleeves as she looks at her reflection. The black and olive green striped shirt she dug out of the suitcase has a slight taper to the waist, loose but still loosely shaped, and it’s extraordinarily odd to see herself in anything that isn’t her armor or at least three sizes too large and almost shapelessly boxy.

The low dip of the neckline shows off more skin than she’s grown used to over the past few months, but it’s not entirely uncomfortable either. Just unfamiliar.

She doesn’t bother putting that much effort into her outfit. It’s not like she’s doing anything _that_ important. Today feels like a jeans and sneakers day anyway. She does run a brush through her bedhead, though, spending a few minutes getting that mess under control. She still wants to look _presentable_.

Her mom peers in through the open door. “Want me to do your hair?”

Pidge hands her the brush wordlessly. It’s something she’s missed desperately, those evenings where her mother would style her waist-length mess of hair into some braid or carefully coiled bun.

Rebecca smiles and pushes her daughter to sit on the toilet lid, working the brush through the tangled hair slowly. It takes a few minutes and she has to run the brush under the sink four or five times, and she pauses for a moment when she realizes the Paladin is purring as she relishes the attention, but she manages to pull most of her daughter’s mane into a snug, short little French braid that she finishes off with a little black hair tie. A few stubborn tendrils of shorter hair frame the teenager’s face. The blonde smiles as she taps the bare skin of her daughter’s neck.

“I see Perseus is still here. Fitting, in a way,” she hums, tapping out the pattern of freckles that make up the small constellation centered over her spine. “How are you feeling?”

The Paladin purses her lips and shrugs, turning but not quite looking her mother in the eye. “Nervous. Excited. Scared.” She pauses and chews on the inside of her cheek. “Really scared, actually…”

“Why?”

“… What if I _don’t_ come back?”

Rebecca’s eyes fall to the floor and she nods, hands resting on her child’s shoulders. “As long as you try. That’s all I can ask. I know we ask so much of you already…”

Pidge smiles and does her best to make it look cocky. “That’s because I’m amazing. I can do anything.”

Rebecca giggles and pulls her daughter into a hug. “Yes, yes you can. Anything you set that brilliant little mind to,” she says, tapping Pidge’s forehead as she leans back.

Her mother pulls back and readjusts her ankle-length skirt, glancing in the mirror. She tugs at her shirt and purses her lips. “Do I look ok? I mean, I know she’s royalty, and I was a _mess_ last night- do I look- Pigeon stop laughing this is serious.”

Pidge muffles her snickering behind her hand, one brow rising curiously. “Mom, it’s fine. You look great. I doubt Allura would say anything if you didn’t anyway- she’s seen me in the kitchen at three am. There’s _nothing_ you can do that will top that.”

Rebecca sighs, rolling her eyes and smiling widely.

“That’s fair. _I’ve_ seen you in the kitchen at three am. That is one act I don’t think I could beat if I tried.”

The teenager sticks out her tongue. Her mother pinches her nose gently with two fingers, crinkling her own nose in a playful mock and sticking her own tongue out right back.

 

Bora folds her thick uniform jacket with practiced ease until it’s small enough to fit inside her saddlebags. The shirt she’s wearing underneath is the same one Katya wore when she picked up Pidge from the hospital- sleeveless to show off her toned arms, with a high neck, and solid black.

She has a long sleeve of tattoos trailing down her right arm; mostly flowers, birds, elegantly styled and richly colored. She weaves her fingers together and twists her wrists to crack the knuckles of her hands, and a mark that doesn’t blend with the rest of the ink catches the teenager’s eye.

It’s blunt, angular, and a faded rich shade of violet that doesn’t match the colors of the lineart above it.

The symbol isn’t anything she remembers seeing offhand, but it still tugs familiarly in the back of her mind nonetheless. The astronaut catches her staring and looks down at her wrist, smiling softly.

Bora runs her thumb over the tattoo on her wrist in slow, circular motions, unable to make eye contact.

“There was a knife, a dagger… in that little shack out in the desert. I went back there after the Blue Lion incident, after we knew for sure everyone was gone… I wanted to see,” she trails off, glancing over at Rebecca nearby. The other woman puts a gentle hand on her shoulder and gives her an encouraging nod. “It wasn’t there when I went back. Did Keith take it with him?”

Pidge leans back in surprise, jaw opening and closing as she looks for the right words. “What- what do you mean ‘went back’?”

The astronaut laughs and ruffles her own bangs with one hand, the short locks mussed loose over her forehead. “What, you don’t see the family resemblance? I admit, he takes more after his father, but you really don’t see it at all? Even Shiro saw it and you and I both know how oblivious _that_ boy can be.”

Pidge gapes openly as she sees for the first time the obvious answer laughing in her face, the answer to a question she had never thought to ask.

That was why she was so concerned…

Even Allura saw it through the screen and her own exhaustion, billions of miles away…

“I knew him the moment I saw him. I saw his father’s nose, his cheekbones, his shoulders. I saw my eyes, my jawline. I knew the moment I saw him he was the child I gave up all those years ago. Seeing him fly a simulator for the first time only confirmed it. He had my instincts, too. He was _mine_.”

 

“Keith was actually the closest I could get to a Galra word, meaning ‘precious’,” Bora sighs, tugging on her motorcycle jacket slowly. “Thace never even knew. He was already off world when we realized… I was almost _four months pregnant_ and I had no idea, I hadn’t shown at all. No symptoms or anything until then. I had seen your mother go through it before with your brother, so when my own was so different, I was stunned. But then again, maybe normal Galra pregnancies are different.”

“I’m still pissed you never had to deal with morning sickness,” Rebecca teases, sliding her feet into her shoes from the couch. “Or swollen feet, or anything else. And you only looked five months along on your due date, too. That was some _bullshit_. I looked like a damn blimp when I was only six months pregnant with Matt.”

Bora rolls her eyes fondly. “I did have _serious_ cravings though. That was what tipped us off, when I started digging into the same pregnancy treats your mom used to go for. My periods were always erratic, short, so not bleeding for three months didn’t mean anything to me.”

“It was when you nearly _stabbed_ one of us in the hand over the food, that’s when I realized. Because, honestly, I can relate. Pregnancy cravings are no joke, and I got just as territorial with my food,” the blonde nods sagely. Pidge is almost surprised at how easy it is to picture her mom stabbing someone over a pickle.

Pidge blinks and leans back, mouth hanging open when she registers the astronaut’s meaning.  “Keith is half Galra? _How is that even_ …?”

She leans back against the counter and crosses her arms with a shrug, tapping the toe of her boot against the floor slowly. “Believe me, I was _just_ as surprised as anyone else. I didn’t exactly think it was possible. It was the only answer though. I hadn’t slept with anyone else in well over a year. And for a while…”

“We were afraid that he would be born looking like his father. We were afraid of what kind of danger he would be in. We didn’t know what we’d be able to expect,” Rebecca sighs.

“Charlotte offered, if he wasn’t born totally human, that she would leave her entire career behind. She’d work on the ground, be his full-time caretaker so I could still fly. She was willing to sacrifice everything. Katya offered too, insisted that she’d flown enough that she could retire happy and Charlotte could keep going. They bickered about it a lot. Which one of them was more maternal. Dollars to doughnuts _Katya_ would have won that fight though, had it come to it,” Bora laughs softly and shakes her head, squeezing her own arms closer.

Rebecca smiles, rolling her eyes at the memory. “But my sister also swore up and down that he would be human, or human enough that nobody would ever know.”

“Eventually I realized somehow that she was right. When I listened to my instincts, to myself, I _knew_. She was right, and on Halloween she was there to brag as she cleaned him off, telling me he looked as human as you or I. Not so much as herself, seeing as she was dressed as a sexy cat at the time, but you know…”

“We never did have a good explanation for why we skipped out on that party, did we? What did we say?”

Bora shrugs. “Fuck ‘em.” She looks at the Paladin, a sudden weight pulling at her shoulders and she stuffs her hands in her pockets. “That was why I wasn’t totally in my head that night on the bike. I was a week postpartum. I knew giving him up was the best decision, but, _fuck_ if it didn’t destroy me a little.”

The blonde squeezes her bicep gently, face etched with pained sympathy.

 

Rebecca loads the last of her things in the car, shoving a block behind one of the wheels of the now unhitched trailer. She takes a quick second to make sure the padlock on the door is unlocked but secure.

“The woman who did our tattoos, she and her husband were looking to adopt, so with Felicitie’s help we made it happen through the proper channels, made the paperwork manifest like magic, fudged the dates and the signatures. They promised they’d only tell him about me specifically when I said I was ready. I knew he’d be better off with them than he ever would with me- I’d never be home, not even on the planet most of the time because I could never _stop_ flying, and my only family, my dad was in a nursing facility. I didn’t even know the _first thing_ about kids… though,” Bora smiles sadly at the Paladin, “I wonder sometimes if instinct would have taken over. But, they loved him, and that was all I could ask for.”

She pauses by her bike, tapping one gloved hand on the glossy helmet with a curious expression.

“Want to go for a ride?”

Before Pidge can even ask her mother is already calling out from behind her car; “I won’t stop you, but I _will_ guilt trip you if you make me drive alone.”

“Yes,” Pidge smiles brightly. Her mother playfully boos as she opens the car door, sticking her tongue out and pouting dramatically.

 

The two-way radio set-up in the set of helmets is exceptionally convenient, although Pidge has to say her own Paladin helmet continues to be _much_ better. No echo or weird feedback.

She wraps her arms tighter around the waist of the woman in front of her when a question pops to mind.

“Why didn’t you tell him? At least, after he left the Garrison. Why didn’t you go to him then?”

Bora’s sigh echoes in her ears and she feels the woman’s back muscles slack slightly as she leans into the turn.

“When I first realized where he was staying I couldn’t stop myself. I left a roll of cash in an empty tin, enough to get him by for a while, a year if he was careful, and that dagger I mentioned behind some of the old books. I made it look like it had all been there before he got to it. I wanted him to be able to take care of himself, and at the time… I didn’t think showing up and announcing ‘ _I gave birth to you, want to come live with me?_ ’ was the best choice. Not after I had treated him like any other cadet at the academy. Not after I had sworn Shiro, his best friend, a man practically his brother, to secrecy. I was going up on the ISS for four months after that weekend anyway, leaving _yet_ again- I really am almost never home, it seems.”

Pidge lets herself stare at the rocky horizon in the distance, committing it to memory as the sun rises higher and higher into the cloudless crystal blue sky and she takes in the woman’s quiet words.

“I do love him, you know. I did what I did out of love. And the dagger, that was something meant for him, in a way. Thace had two, and he gave me one when he left. I thought Keith would get more use out of it…”

Bora’s head tilts slightly toward her shoulder, her black visor flashing in the daylight.

“I know it’s a lot, but… can you not tell him about me?”

Pidge glances at the ground rushing by and purses her lips. “I can’t promise you that.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything else,” she huffs warmly. “As much that you got from your mom… you’ve still got Sam in you too. Damn his honesty.”

“Damn indeed,” Pidge laughs weakly. “But I can try, at least. I won’t say anything if it doesn’t come up.”

Bora hums thoughtfully in her ear. “I appreciate that.”

 

Pidge strides past with her spine straight and her face molded into what she admits is kind of a cocky expression when she’s ushered past the academy’s security. She readjusts her bag on her shoulders, surprised but grateful when they do as Bora says and leave it alone. She spots Iverson from the corner of her eye and when he gapes at her she turns and mouths, slowly and clearly, ‘you were right’, topping it off with a toothy smile and a middle finger salute.

Rebecca doesn’t even look as she slaps the teenager’s hand down with a long-suffering sigh.

The paperwork is quick and the explanation is even quicker. The man who takes the documents from them looks _exhausted_ , and Pidge faintly recognizes him as Markus from last night.

“He’s been asking for you since four this morning… Please, just _go_.”

Pidge glances at the clock, one finger poking half-consciously at a little hole in the knee of her jeans she hadn’t noticed until now. It’s only nine. She applauds whatever the hell it is her Lion is doing, giggling under her breath when the Lion rumbles and glows under the praise. If the man across the desk notices her giggle he doesn’t say anything, clearly too exhausted to care at this point. They’re ushered into an ATV at the back of the property and the desert drive takes longer than she expected, not stopping until noon.

 

Even though she knows it’s only the Green Lion, doing the same thing Pidge did nearly a week ago…

There’s a wave of nausea that crashes over her when she enters the hangar, as she hears her brother’s voice again, and she steels herself, cringing when the voice causes her mother to freeze in her tracks. She laces her fingers with her mom’s and squeezes her hand gently, in obvious apology.

Katya hands an enormous duffle bag to Rebecca and murmurs something in her ear, pulling away as she says just loud enough that someone else might hear if they payed attention; “He had a few demands. I figured you should be the one.”

The blonde nods quietly and the older woman places a lightning quick kiss to her temple.

“We managed to talk him into allowing Gyeong on board, to talk,” she nods conspiratorially, and the astronaut nods back in understanding. She stands beside the Holt’s and puts one gentle hand on Rebecca’s shoulder.

Pidge squeezes her mother’s hand as the Green Lion’s head bows to the ground, her mouth aching tenderly just from proximity as she feels the hinge repair in a sudden snap, tugging them forward when the jaw opens.

 

The internal parts still look like a tornado ripped through them, and only half the screens are working now, including the main one, but it’s more than Pidge needs to get off the ground. She checks through everything as she makes her way to the helm of the Lion, hearing the soft noises of fascination from the women behind her.

Though Pidge would never admit it in a thousand years she did in fact hold a brief moment of silence for the horribly melted peanut butter cup that had just spent the past week and a half locked inside of a metal Lion out in the desert. She holds it reverently in her hands for a moment.

 ** _Apologies, cub,_** she hears the Lion huff softly, yawning, amused at the girl’s reaction. **_Thought maintaining internal temperature was unnecessary._**

 

She’s easily eight or nine feet deep inside of her Lion’s chest (upside-down, too, hooking her feet precariously on internal supports) when she finds the panel Green is guiding her toward and radiates a soft apology as she summons out her bayard from her armor, digging into the side of it and prying it open roughly.

She wriggles her entire torso into the space and glances around. She can see where the crystal belongs, that part is obvious, but the light is nearly non-existent down here. It’s hard to see where it might have ended up and she needs to work quickly.

**_Bayard in the teeth._ **

Pidge obeys without hesitation, lips quirking in a broad grin as the blade of her bayard stays lit. The green light washes over the wiring and she spots a faint glimmer buried underneath the greys and blues to her right.

The teal colored crystal is easily the size of her thigh and it takes several long seconds for her to wriggle it out of the wiring, careful not to disrupt anything. She shoves it back toward the supports, grunting and straining as the surprisingly heavy stone shifts slowly back into place.

**_Barrier is now up._ **

Pidge crows excitedly in her head as she begins the frustrating process of climbing back out, _still_ upside down.

 

She sets her helmet on the back of her chair as she settles in.

Being back inside the Green Lion is incredible.

Pidge had almost forgotten how it felt to be so in tune- It’s not the same as how it feels to form Voltron, to become an extension of other people, to become part of a new whole in perfect balance, but it’s an incredible feeling nonetheless. She flexes her hands on the Lion’s controls with a shallow exhale, feeling the massive claws of her Lion’s front paws curl in tune to her fingers. She can feel herself overflowing with energy, with power, with potential.

It’s an _amazing_ feeling.

Her tail thrashes behind her, the broken parts snapping and weaving back together in an instant, and she lets herself slide completely into that space of unity as she feels Green flush with electric energy. The dents in her chest swell out a moment later as she uses the last of her stored energy for repairs.

When the particle barrier went up the steel cables holding the Lion’s body in place snapped like rubber bands, and Green rises to her feet behind the veil of protective neon light as Pidge feels their energy blend together. The Lion rolls her jaw before letting it drop open and letting out a brief roar of excitement.

Rebecca turns toward Gyeong with a regretful smile, muscles tense as she drops the bag behind the Paladin’s chair. “Right, I forgot. Sorry ‘bout this.”

Bora shrugs and angles her jaw as she closes her eyes. “I’ll tell them I was blindsided. Never saw it coming.”

Pidge’s jaw nearly hits the floor when her mother punches her best friend in the face. Bora catches herself as she stumbles and rubs where she was hit, a sunny grin spreading over her face as her stormy eyes twinkle.

“You really still _do_ have that hook. This is going to be one ugly bruise.” She reaches out with one fist, snorting when Rebecca bumps her own tender fist to it. She cracks out her neck as she stands back up. “Didn’t knock me out, but damn girl, they’ll believe it did.”

 

Pidge was able to body-slam her way out of the hangar easily, tearing through the metal like it was tissue paper. It didn’t stand a chance against the solid shield on her Lion’s back. She didn’t really feel bad about it, either. After that it was a hop, skip, and a jump back to Bora’s to pick up the Paladin’s speeder.

They manage to load everything from the trailer into the Lion in just under a minute- Rebecca insisted her daughter take some of her clothes, at least, and some board games and movies to keep her and her friends entertained until the next time she could drop by, insisting that she drop by the second the chance arises.

She also managed to get ahold of Allura, hoping the Castle was already nearby enough- she wanted to give her mom the chance to talk to Allura directly, and to receive one of the hailing beacons personally.

The Castle had some kind of issue that meant she’ll be near Saturn in another ten hours or so, but not before then.

Rebecca smiles and shrugs, giving her daughter’s shoulder a comforting squeeze as she murmurs something about a next time.

Bora is sitting propped against her garage door and rubbing gently at her face, waving brightly as she props one elbow on her knee. Pidge hesitates, grabbing her mother’s wrist as she walks over the Green Lion’s tongue for the last time.

“This isn’t right.”

Rebecca turns from her wide-eyed reverie at the Lion to her daughter and furrows her brows together.

The Paladin hiccups, screwing her eyes shut in frustration. “This isn’t _fair_ , this isn’t supposed to be… If you hadn’t gotten hurt, Olivier would be in my seat. The Blue Lion would have chosen _you_ , and you would have flown… This isn’t right, mom… I wasn’t meant for this, _you_ were. _I was never meant for this_. It’s just dumb fucking luck that put me here!”

Her fingers curl tightly into her palms, nails biting at her flesh through her gloves, and she recoils into herself as another wave crashes over her, sniffling in her rage and her guilt. Green tries to purr in the back of her mind.

“Oh, my little Pigeon,” Rebecca croons, “you were meant for this- for all of this. You were meant to do great things.” She leans closer to her child and carefully takes her face in her hands.

Pidge grips her mother’s wrists in her hands as tears burn in her eyes. Another frustrating little hiccup clicks her teeth together and Rebecca smiles gently.

“There’s something an old friend of mine once told me, about people he believed were meant to do what you do. ‘ _Their blood is laced with starlight_ ’, and when you look closely, you can see them glowing from within, as a sign of that light.” Rebecca purses her lips, her expression torn between heartache and joy. “I saw it years ago, that starlight. You were destined for this and Katherine Valentina Holt don’t you _ever_ doubt yourself- this is what you were _meant_ for. The atoms and the stardust that came together to form you…”

She presses a rough kiss to her daughter’s forehead, holding it for as long as she can. She runs her thumbs gently over Pidge’s cheeks to wipe away the saltwater collecting there and sighs warmly as she pulls away.

“You were meant for greatness. Go, sweetheart, go and be _great_.”

Pidge purrs through the tears at her mother and Rebecca laughs, squeezing the girl’s cheeks together.

“You’ll be back sooner than you think,” she promises. “Now go, go kick some Zarkon ass, and go find your friends. Go be the badass little Pigeon I raised.”

The Paladin snorts and buries her face in her mother’s chest as she gives the woman a big, crushing hug.

“I will mom. I promise. I’ll kick ass in your name,” she chuckles.

“I love you too,” Rebecca sniffles, pulling back with a watery smile.

 

The Green Lion is exhausted.

Apparently she hasn’t slept at all since waking up near Kerberos. Apparently she needs sleep- not as frequently as her Paladin, but she needs to power down, rest all the same. Instead she’s put all of her energy into staying wide awake and on guard for her Paladin even as it drove her into a mind-numbing state of permanent exhaustion for well over a week.

And it is definitely slowing her down now.

Pidge may have taken a brief detour on her way to Saturn, flying wildly off course to the surprise of her Lion as she aimed them toward Jupiter.

As much as part of her wants to go all the way back out to Kerberos, to see the wreckage that started her journey, it’s the knowledge of what happened years ago that led to her birth that drives her toward Europa.

She’s curious.

She can’t help it.

 

She wanted to see it for herself.

She sits on the ice and stares at the swirling gas giant on the horizon, secure between Green’s paws as the massive mechanical cat reclines, for the first time in nearly two weeks, completely offline. Pidge can still feel the Lion in the back of her mind, and if she were to reach out and prod her telepathically she knows that Green would wake up again.

Pidge misses the sensation of her conscious Lion like a limb, as weirdly ironic as that sounds.

It hasn’t been long, but… She’s not used to being alone in her own head.

She doesn’t like it.

It’s too empty. Too quiet.

Cold almost.

She’s alone with her own thoughts, and she tries not to let them consume her.

The guilt…

The fear…

She’s grateful Green isn’t awake when she starts to cry again, when the hiccups and the tears fog the inside of her helmet and Jupiter turns hazy in the distance. She wraps her arms around her legs and she breathes slowly, burying her face in her folded forearms and riding out the tears as they come. She doesn't even know why they do at this point. She feels like she doesn't know anything anymore.

 

She’s still sitting on the surface of Europa when she feels a whipping of energy and ice and dust swirl up behind her, and she looks back over her shoulder to see the Castle of Lions, magnificent as always, coming in for a landing. The Lion rouses a moment later. The Princess runs out to meet her on the ice, holding her biceps and smiling in concern as she greets her found Paladin.

When Allura asks why she was so far from her original destination the Paladin just shrugs and smiles faintly. She doesn’t have an answer.

All she has are questions.

 

And new horizons to chase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all were right- the woman with the Korean surname and the red jacket and the badass astronaut/pilot skills was Keith’s bio-mom. Her first name was picked specifically because of the meaning, fyi. I didn’t do that with the other characters, I picked their names kind of randomly, but with her I couldn’t resist.
> 
> I’ve seen a lot of stuff where Keith’s bio-mom and/or parents are dead and that’s the reason he has no family on earth but I dunno, that’s not the only reason kids end up in the foster system. 
> 
> I have a lot of ideas. For the last chapter, about Rebecca coming back, Bora could have also come back for Keith and he could have grown up on the Castle too; I think she would have at least escorted Rebecca to Earth (especially if they were disobeying orders for her to go back) and once there, well, I doubt she would have stopped herself from at least going to see him. But that's a tangent for another day.
> 
>  
> 
> And with this chapter, part 1 is complete.
> 
> Now on to part 2.
> 
> Of a 3 part series. Maybe 4. We’ll see. Definitely at least 3.
> 
> And each part should be around 15 chapters at a minimum.
> 
>  
> 
> This is all going to turn into an AU once Season 2 comes out and I give no fucks anymore- I am beyond cool with this.
> 
> (Also I'm not sure that the new tags when I put up chapter 16 will include the spoiler of Galra Keith, for any potential newcomers to the story later. I dunno if I want to do that. Probably not.)


	16. Icarus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wasn't careful, but she told them nothing. She took the fall and never said a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neat little change of pace, just a short chapter before we get started on the main part of part 2. Today will be a quick look at Thace and what he's up to.
> 
> And again, I know I say this almost every time, but holy shit guys I love you so much and please enjoy.

Thace knows that his position is precarious.

And that any little action he takes that _might_ be construed as anything other than blindingly loyal to the Empire could easily be his last.

Especially after what happened with Thera. _To_ Thera. He knows there is ever greater suspicion now than before even if he continues to deflect it with grace and ease.

But when he saw the tides turning against Voltron, he had no choice.

They weren’t going to make it out alive otherwise, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the universe needed them.

Hearing that the Lions had been reunited was one of the happiest days of his life.

Seeing them trapped in Zarkon’s court had been one of the most terrifying.

He was born into the rebellion, molded and raised under the cover of darkness into a Galra who believed more than anything in the downfall of his own Empire and in the restoration of peace.

His mother can trace her family line back ten thousand years to the Great Traitor, Nova. Nova’s line was meant to be erased entirely, and as far as anyone else knew it had been purged from the gene pool down to his fourth cousins. Zarkon had made an example of Nova, and on the surface it had worked. But Nova had an illegitimate son, separate from his mate-proper and the family he had grown in his time serving Zarkon and plotting his betrayal, and the illegitimate child was born to one of the founders of the early rebellion.

Nova’s bloodline continues to plot Zarkon’s death even after ten thousand years.

 

Officially, today Thace is to take a shipment of prisoners to a high-value Balmera work camp, a Balmera still young and vibrant, and a contingent of soldiers and droids to crush a rebellion brewing among the native Balmerans who had heard stories of the return of Voltron.

Unofficially, he has some information he needs to distribute, and he needs to do it carefully.

He glances over the itinerary and the prisoners documented, out of habit more than anything now.

He notices that one of the prisoners is marked ‘Terran’ and his blood runs cold before he remembers- she is safe, still. The strange little alien woman who nearly killed him to protect her own pack and then later fell in love with him is safe on her own planet, or at the very least in her own solar system. Bora is not the Champion who escaped (although he wouldn’t have been that surprised if it _had_ been her in the arena, given the stories he had heard before he managed to barter a recording of one of the fights from another soldier) and she is not one of the others who remain.

He knows; he checked their documentation descriptions and photos the moment he had the chance. There are only three humans- two, now- and she is not among them.

He knows she is safe for now, and he takes a small comfort in it.

He knew her briefly, by chance, but he knows he loves her hopelessly. He still remembers her at night, alone, and the nights they spent together realizing there was far more they had in common than they had different despite the entire universe between them. The feel of her soft hand cradling his face, the color of her hammered silver eyes in the darkness, lit only by moonlight, the length of her silk black hair spilling out around her, the sound of her voice, like music…

She was curious and daring and despite the fact that she could rage and consume like a feral wildfire she was frighteningly, painfully gentle. The scars she left him with are invisible and will follow him to his grave but… he does not mind them. He will _never_ mind them.

This time he reads the name- the ones the human gave when they were captured, anyway.

The tablet slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor.

He remembers the other members of Bora’s pack. He remembers Charlotte, who tended the wounds he received from the crash and from Bora; Katya, who brought him food, and medicine for the fever; and Felicitie, who worked studiously on his broken translator day and night and helped bridge the language gap between them. And he remembers Rebecca, who treated him like family without a moment of hesitation.

He remembers them all, and he remembers them well. He would gladly consider them friends. Even after all these years he remembers them like it was yesterday.

Rebecca’s mate was named Samuel Holt, her child Matthew Holt.

They were a family of explorers from a planet only just now branching regularly out into its own solar system.

The odds of this human being hers’ are low, but when he stares at the intake image, into the flashing hazel eyes…

He is a little surprised at how quickly humans grow if little Matthew is already old enough to go out on a starship. He saw pictures of the young human while he was being cared for- he was small and wide-eyed, with round little cheeks and a messy nest of hair on his head. Rebecca talked about him endlessly; Bora liked to joke that he could just turn off his translator for a while, she wouldn’t notice, but he liked listening. He liked listening even better when Bora ran her nails gently over his scalp.

It was nice to see some parts of the universe were still happy. And Rebecca reminded him of his elder sister, Thera, who had talked about her own young in the same manner.

He misses Thera deeply.

And when he tries to remember her face, he finds he cannot be sure which features are hers and which belong to the human. They’ve begun to blend in his memory. Even when he first met the humans he had a hard time distinguishing Thera and Rebecca. And later, Rebecca and Thera. Now they are both only memories…

He dusts the tablet off and glances around the empty hallway, exhaling sharply.

He needs to see this human personally.

 

Part of him is surprised, but that part is the part that doesn’t remember.

When he remembers the humans he knew, he knows without a shadow of a doubt that this continued defiance is par for the course. They are a small and primitive species but they are made of iron in both body and mind and Zarkon and his Empire would do well to remember that.

A fire flashes in the young human’s eyes even as he stays rooted to the spot.

He had lunged away from the door the moment it had opened, shouting threats and making demands because he knows this is not part of the routine- routine is safety, awful though the routine itself may be. Thace keeps both hands raised in a gesture he knows means ‘I mean no harm’, briefly pressing one finger to his mouth for silence.

The human is a little thinner than when he arrived, but his muscle is still dense and lean from work, and his hair has grown longer, past his shoulders, hanging limp in his face. His nails (not claws, Thace always wants to call them claws but he knows humans don’t have any) show signs of stress-biting and are painfully short. It’s hard to say whether the healing shallow scratches on the human’s face are from a fight with another prisoner or self-inflicted, and he clearly favors one leg but tries not to let the Galran see as he straightens his shoulders out in defiance.

In person Thace can see Rebecca’s blood in the human’s face, clear as daylight, and as risky as he knows it is he takes that gamble.

Thace raises one hand to the translator, turning it off in a steady, obvious motion. The human narrows his eyes, thankfully quiet but still not dropping his guard. The Galran speaks with what English he remembers and he knows his accent is as atrocious as it ever was. “ _I know you mother- I know Rebecca Holt. I am friend, to her. I know her when you were small_.”

The human’s jaw drops and he stares openly, looking the soldier up and down with wide, baffled eyes. Thace purses his lips and nods as he turns the translator back on.

“I can explain everything, but I'm going to need you to trust me right now, Matthew.”

He couldn’t protect Thera. He couldn’t protect her children, little Kathra and Zartha either. He couldn't even try. He holds no delusions that they are still alive- he knows what the Druid Sanguivara does to her test subjects. And that will haunt him for the rest of his days.

But he might be able to protect Matthew.

And he hopes that counts for something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I woke up feeling like hell today (for reasons that soon became obvious) and I opened my phone and saw all the comments that I had gotten since the last update and I got so happy I started crying. My dog looked at me like I had two heads. The cat just sat on my pillow and tilted her head and smacked my cheek. Repeatedly. It was great. They're "supportive".
> 
> Also it looks like some people did some late night binge reading recently so to them I say- I hope you got some sleep. I really do. I see comments that were posted at like 1 or 2 in the morning and I just immediately get all parental and I want to tuck you in and it's ridiculous because I am like your age (probably) and I am also a hypocrite who stays up all night half the time anyway. But still I want to mother hen.
> 
> God I relate to Space Dad sometimes.
> 
> Also real quick where the fuck is that one comic, the one where Lance is asking Blue if Keith was supposed to be her pilot because he sensed her first? And she goes 'I called to him because I knew he would bring the Paladins together and bring me my pilot- you'. I've been looking for like two days and I can't find it anywhere. That was actually my inspiration for giving Green her own voice. Can anyone link it to me?


	17. Only A Flesh Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tis only a flesh wound.”
> 
> “But your arm is off.”
> 
> “... No it’s not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the hell did this story get so many kudos holy crap you guys.
> 
> Also over 1700 hits what the fuck. What the fuck.

Allura hesitates as the Green Lion’s jaw drops open, her eyes falling to the ice as she finds herself distracted by something that escapes the notice of her Paladin.

Pidge feels her side twinge again as she climbs back into her Lion, a reminder that the painkiller regimen she was supposed to be on has fallen slightly off-track, but she can always get back on top of that once she’s inside. Her legs and back are stiff and sore from sitting curled on the ice for all the hours she didn’t bother keeping track of; even with her suit protecting her she still burns with that familiar prickle that comes from being far too cold for far too long and her own backside curses her very name.

Allura follows her into the Green Lion, bracing one hand suddenly against the teenager’s back when her numb legs try to trip her on wires and walk her into a wall.

“How long have you been awake, Pidge? I can’t imagine you took a nap on the ice out there,” the Princess murmurs as they pick their way through to the Lion’s helm.

“How long has it been since I video-called you?”

“Over twenty-four hours… Pidge have you been awake for twenty-four hours?”

“Try closer to thirty-six,” the sleep-deprived teenager snorts, settling into her chair with a tired hum. Allura’s hands grip the back of it and she leans over to watch the flickering screens as the Lion starts to rise and shake off the thin layer of dust and frost the Castle had sprayed over her when it landed. “Maybe just thirty? Nah probably thirty-six.”

“Pidge, I apologize in advance for my language and please know I say this with the greatest possible respect, but _what the ever-loving quiznak_?”

Pidge shrugs.

It’s not like sleep-deprivation is a _new_ thing for her, at any rate. She and sleep-deprivation go way back.

Green stretches out slowly, and her tail hangs low enough to brush and scrape against the surface of Europa as she walks at a modest amble towards her private hangar. Distantly the Paladin notes that there must be all sorts of probes and satellites that have been seeing her out here. Distantly she’s amused by how boring she must have been to watch.

“As soon as this Lion is docked you’re going to go directly to bed. That’s an _order_ ,” Allura emphasizes gently.

The Green Paladin pulls one hand from the controls to salute dryly before yawning and setting her hand back down. The Lion’s step doesn’t even hiccup at the lack of direct contact.

Pidge is too tired to notice Allura’s fascinated gasp, and focuses her energy on pawing lazily at the still closed hangar doors.

The open a moment later and Green makes it just far enough inside that she can lay down without her tail hanging out in open space behind her.

 

Coran catches Pidge as she stumbles on the last step, and he and Allura exchange some words the teenager is too exhausted to try to bother to hear as she rights herself and turns around. The Paladin pats her Lion’s massive chin and bumps her still-helmeted head against it for a moment gently, leaning back as she feels the rumbling Lion power down again and retreat into her own headspace.

Pidge frowns at the fresh emptiness but accepts it for what it is, already turning to go back to her room across the Castle. She imagines it’s probably about time for her to try to power down too.

“Pidge, wait.”

The Paladin turns around, sleepily rubbing at her face. Coran smiles warmly and the teenager notes the faint red-orange stubble lining his jaw.

“While we were searching for you and everyone else, we took the time to clean out some parts of the Castle that we haven’t been using. There’s something you should know.”

Allura nods, as if she’s only just remembered. “You’ve been staying in staff quarters; you and the other Paladins. They were the first people to evacuate, so we knew their rooms were… safe. We were not sure what we would find in other rooms.” The implication hanging in the air is an odd one.

“There’s a larger room for you if you’d like; there are five Paladin suites on this ship. The Green Paladin suite is all straightened up if you want it,” Coran says.

The teenager blinks slowly. “Suite… like, with its own private bathroom?”

The Alteans glance between themselves and blink in confusion. “Yes.”

“I’ve been sharing the communal showers with these guys for five months and I’m only just now finding out I could have had my own bathroom? _Lead the way_ ,” the Paladin gestures with a lazy flourish.

Fighting for a shower schedule had been first on her to-do list when she came out to the team. Before then she had mostly just showered at odd times, usually while everyone else was sleeping, or just skipped a shower outright if she hadn’t smelled particularly bad that day. She’d only run into awkward situations once or twice and had gotten out fine; it helped that she wasn’t keeping that secret very long though, only about a week or so. Afterwards though she made it very clear that every day for thirty minutes she would have the entire setup to herself and anyone else could go to hell, regardless of the fact that the individual stalls and tubs were all walled off with opaque glass. Anyone who would dare intrude on her bath or shower for any reason would be subject to a particularly vicious electrocution- and thankfully she had never needed to follow through on that threat.

Lance had even helped draft the schedule so that everyone could get their own private time. He had an entire hour blocked out for himself that he utilized to the fullest extent possible.

Evidently Alteans despite their tendency toward modest dress had no such nudity issues and found her (and everyone else’s) personal feelings odd, even if they respected them.

It wasn’t even a nudity thing so much as it really was just a _privacy_ thing. She just wanted time to herself, to unwind, and bathing was something that had always guaranteed privacy.

Well, mostly. Sometimes if Matt had some announcement he just had to make or conversation he was dying to start he’d settle in on the closed toilet lid while Pidge contemplated drowning herself in the bubble bath behind the curtain before he noticed what she was doing. His dog definitely took after him in that whole _there-is-no-such-thing-as-personal-space_ mindset; in fact, she usually stuck her head in through the curtain to lick at the bubbles while Matt prattled on and on and Pidge rolled her eyes and mimed darkly with every reply.

 

The room is similar to Allura’s, with a massive round bed on the far wall that Pidge suspects fits an uncomfortable amount of people, a few bookshelves and dressers scattered in careful arrangements around the space. To her left she can see a closet, a floor length mirror, and to her right a door slightly ajar that clearly leads into her private bathroom. Shades of green are abundant, although the furniture is darker than she was expecting considering the rest of the Castle, in shades of earthy brown rather than white like she had expected.

A hand on her shoulder blade she registers as Coran’s guides her into the room as Allura fidgets with the doors of the tall wardrobe in the front right corner of the room.

“If you need anything we’ll be down the hall to your right,” the older Altean smiles as Pidge settles in on the bed and starts to tug at her gloves. “Allura’s room is the third on the right, mine is the second on the left.”

The teenager nods as the Alteans bid her good night.

She makes it roughly halfway out of her armor before she collapses, falling asleep face down in her black pants, leg plating, boots and bra, with the rest of her armor and clothes scattered around the foot of the bed haphazardly.

She lasts almost three hours before she jolts awake, the fringes of a nightmare she does _not_ want to deal with right now still hanging on the edges of her senses as she steadies herself on her elbows. It’s different than she remembers… Worse. It's a new one. A blanket she doesn’t remember grabbing slides off her shoulders as she moves.

Instead she sits up and finishes stripping the rest of the way, blearily registering the tidy stack of boxes and bags in the corner by the wardrobe that wasn’t there when she came in. She digs around for a loose shirt and shorts in her backpack and cracks her neck out as the last vestiges of her initial exhaustion fade into the background.

As strong as her exhaustion was, it’s already been replaced, and far out of reach.

Pidge can’t sleep. She knows she should, she knows she has to, but she can’t find it in herself to sleep.

There’s too much noise in her head.

And nightmares are not something she wants to grapple with alone yet, not without her Lion’s help.

 

The Green Lion rouses with a thundering rumble and a telepathic yawn when her Paladin wanders into her hangar. Pidge feels a pang of guilt for waking the Lion so suddenly, and for no real reason, though she keeps it firmly to herself.

**_Not tired?_ **

“No,” Pidge sighs, wandering over to her workbench. She traces her hand across the cool metal surface and examines her old notes scattered across the desk, letting herself flit from idea to idea as she hunts for something to focus on. The Galra crystal is certainly appealing, as are Sendak’s compiled memories, but she doesn’t think she’d have the patience to work on decoding any more data without Hunk’s help right now. In the back of her mind the gifted flash drive comes up, but she shrugs it off lazily as she hunts for a better idea.

She needs something… meatier. Something that will consume her and exhaust her until she blacks out entirely, so that she _can’t_ dream.

In the past that was easier. She can’t recall a single night she slept more than four hours at the Garrison, and she can’t recall a single night she had dreamed there either. She didn’t have nightmares often after her family disappeared on Kerberos, but she frequently found herself wrestling with dreams that broke her heart when she woke up, like she soon found again on the Castle. In her _completely unbiased_ opinion it was just easier not to dream.

**_Going to work yourself to sleep?_ **

“You know me too well, big girl.”

She glances up at the giant mechanical cat, currently laying with her head between her massive paws, golden eyes glowing but dim even in the low light, her towering silhouette hazy in the artificial evening, and a flash of inspiration comes to her.

Her best ideas always come when she’s exhausted.

The Lion hears her quiet request and her great maw opens like she’s yawning, locking firmly in place to allow the Paladin ease of access as the Lion fades quietly into the background.

 

Pidge decides to take out the cloak she modified for the Green Lion to tinker with it.

And by ‘take out’, she of course means violently rip the device out from where she installed it on the inside of her Lion, two feet deep underneath the floor just behind her chair, hissing and growling to herself the entire time with no regard for the integrity of the design of her project but extraordinarily careful of her Lion.

Whatever she ruins, she can fix anyway.

Nearly an hour later she has a much, much better plan of action. After fixing up her cloak and tinkering lazily she ran through the Lion’s internal layout the cat had mentally provided before dozing back off and was struck again by inspiration.

Instead of trying to modify the cloak itself, as if _it_ was the problem, to make it last longer she just had to install it somewhere with more juice.

 _Duh_.

She raps her knuckles on Green’s giant silver claw, lifting her voice just enough to get the cat’s attention. “Sorry to wake you, _again_ ; I need you to lay down on your back, or your side if you want. Your side would work better, actually. You can stay like that as long as you want so you don’t have to get up again.”

The Lion jerks awake in their shared headspace, a wave of confusion washing out from her and over her miserable, sleepy Paladin now doggedly driving herself into the ground.

“I’m going to do some modifications to your cloak, install it somewhere better, so I need you to lay down. I have to go get my bayard first though so take your time,” the teenager nods, striding out of the hangar quickly as she hears the Lion begin to rise on her great mechanical legs.

 

Allura stirs suddenly from her restless sleep as a strange searing pain begins to twist in her chest. She places one hand over the starburst scar beneath her bust, closing her eyes and hissing softly as it throbs under her touch. She breathes through the pain and lets herself feel, the way she used to see her mother do, so long ago- the upper left tip of the star is thrumming the worst, the pain and the heat is most intense in that part of the scar.

Better it be there than where she had initially feared, she reasons.

She slips out of bed slowly, the fabric of her nightgown rustling as she slips out across the room and out through her bedroom door. The mice chirp from their place on the pillows but don’t wake and follow after her as the door slides shut.

 

Pidge is halfway through the installation process, borrowing a little power from an arm-length crystal buried twenty feet inside her Lion’s chest to power the device she had all but stolen from the invisible maze, when a searing white-hot agony tears through her right side and she swallows a scream of pain. Both she and Green jerk wide awake at the sensation and the Paladin immediately tries purring and cooing to soothe her Lion as she brings her left hand to clutch over exactly where she knows her stitches are. She takes shallow breaths as she pulls her hand away, already knowing what she’s about to see given the warm dampness clinging to her skin, whining anyway when the pads of her hand are smeared with an unmistakable red.

She just pulled her stitches, and if she had to guess she pulled them pretty bad.

She rubs her left wrist aggressively into her forehead as she stares at her project and she feels a thin sheen of sweat begin to collect on her clammy face. Endorphins are already pumping through her veins as a reactionary painkiller and it helps a little but she knows it won’t last long. It won’t leave her hands steady enough to finish up here either. She pries her glowing bayard from her teeth with her blood-free hand.

“ _Fuck_ ,” the teenager sighs, glancing down to the slow ooze of blood staining her white shirt and smearing in thin rusty streaks along her Lion’s insides. She’s not sure if her hands are shaking with pain, adrenaline, or frustration right now, but she imagines it’s a healthy blend of the three. “ _Fuuuck_.”

Her head thunks quietly against the metal in frustration and she counts out five patient ticks, trying to catch her breath as she weighs her options.

The best choice right now seems to be option number one- putting her project on pause and going back to her room to re-bandage her wound and rest. She loathes the idea of pausing her work (she doesn’t know when she’ll need to be ready to fight again, and her newly powered-up cloak can give her a serious edge in combat that she knows she’ll need if she’s going to have to fight alone) but she’s making a nasty mess right now. And she’s feeling _maybe_ just a touch lightheaded.

Green rumbles in nervous concern and the sound echoes in the air around her like thunder and vibrates deep down in the girl’s muscle.

“I’m going, I’m going,” she sighs, backing out of the precarious pseudo-tunnel inch by inch and grimacing every time she finds herself leaving another faint smear of blood behind on the metal or on the wiring. “That’s going to be a fucking peach to clean later…”

 

Allura and Coran are in the hangar when she climbs out of the narrow carefully pried hole in her Lion’s chest and onto a levitating platform and the Princess looks ready to scold the hell out her when they see the large dark splotch on her shirt and freeze. The Paladin throws up her hands in a placating move and they look downright nauseated at the sight of the thick blood smeared over her hand. She hides that hand as she punches in the command for the platform to descend.

“I’m ok, I swear,” she laughs lightly, too lightly, as her words spill out in a rush and she frantically tries to wipe her hand off on her clothes, “I promise I’m fine, I just had minor surgery a couple days ago, I pulled my stitches, but really I’m fine.”

“Minor surgery-? What do you even qualify as a _‘minor’_ surgery-”

“Pidge you’re _bleeding_ -”

“Mother of quiznak Pidge-”

“I understand you’re resilient but Pidge you really do need medical care,” Coran finishes, nearly drowned out by Allura’s horrified rant.

The Paladin already knows that she’s about to get dragged down to the med bay- she just has the luxury of deciding whether or not she walks there, because she knows either Altean will scoop her up and carry her there in a hummingbird heartbeat if she refuses.

 

Pidge takes one good look at the open healing pod before reeling back and slamming violently into someone’s chest.

Nope.

No.

Not happening.

Not today.

No thank you.

She thought maybe they might have some alternative she hadn’t seen before, like a fancy metal detector wand thing they could just hold over the wound to expedite the process. She knew it was unlikely, but possible. Weirder things had happened.

Pidge did _not_ agree to go take a nap in a healing pod.

She knows that if she sleeps right now, that the nightmares will come. The Green Lion is still recuperating from her own exhaustion and will still be for who knows how long. She wouldn’t be able to protect her Paladin while she slept. And nobody else can go with her- _as far as she knows_ -

“No, thanks, I’m good. Really, guys, I don’t need a pod. I’m fine. I just need to take it easy for a few days…” she laughs, the sound painfully forced even to her own ears.

Long fingers wrap gently around her shoulders and the teenager blearily registers in the back of her mind who it was she slammed into.

“You’ll be out before you know it.”

“ _How about you go to hell_ ,” Pidge snaps, still not tearing her wide eyes away from the open pod. She’s not sure if it’s the pain, the exhaustion or the stress, but she knows that even she isn’t normally this rough around the edges. And she also knows Allura would not normally take her attitude so lightly- the woman had once started an all-out food fight over Pidge’s sass- so she was not one to take anything the teenager dished out lying down.

“You’re bleeding, Pidge,” Coran cuts in, face sympathetic and warm as he taps gently on the pad beside the machine. “Your Earth medicine is a bit- well… it’d be better for you to just heal overnight, wouldn’t it? I understand your species is quite resilient, but you don’t want to have to deal with stitches and open wounds for weeks, do you? That can’t possibly be comfortable. And that’s quite a bit of blood.”

Pidge narrows her eyes at the empty pod.

She’s more than willing to tolerate the stitches and the pain if it means staying awake. The hands on her shoulders give her a firm squeeze.

“Absolutely not Pidge.”

Given the tone of Allura’s reprimand, the teenager figures she said that last part out loud. Damn.

“I have nightmares.”

And, she figures, in her sleep deprived state she can’t hold anything back. Damn again.

“I have horrible, awful nightmares. I can’t sleep. I don’t want to sleep. If I work myself past the point of exhaustion I don’t dream but I’m not there yet and I don’t want-”

Allura turns her young Paladin to face her and leans down until they’re eye to eye. There’s a flash of something across her face, something deeply pained and empathetic… “You won’t dream in the pods, Pidge. I promise. It’ll just be like a long blink.”

Pidge wraps her hands around Allura’s wrists and turns her bloodshot gaze up, brows twisting together in fear.

“Promise?”

“On my life,” the Princess murmurs, drawing Pidge into a bone-crushing embrace. Pidge squeezes back, careful not to let her bloodied shirt touch the Princess’s soft moon-blue nightgown, before slowly peeling herself away. Coran leads her to the pod with a gentle hand, smiling softly as he helps her in.

“You’ll be out before breakfast,” he says as the cool mist starts to fill the air around her.

 

“She’s so _young_ ,” Allura murmurs, wrapping her arms protectively around herself. She turns her gaze away from the two occupied pods, unable to look at her sleeping Paladins. “She’s practically a child… They both are…”

Coran holds Allura carefully and lets her bury her nose in his chest. She manages to smother the sympathetic tears burning in her eyes and she lets her muscles go slack as she leans heavily against the older Altean, sighing weakly.

“She’s only a child, Coran. A _child_.”

“I know, Princess. But so were you, once. It wasn’t so long ago.”

The Princess exhales shakily as buried memories come flooding back. Even though it’s been ten thousand years, it still feels like only yesterday… The secrets she still keeps, the nightmares that still burn fresh behind her eyes…

“That doesn’t make it better,” she huffs quietly, shaking her head as her voice sounds strangled in her own ears. Coran lays his cheek on the crown of her head with a low sigh. Her voice comes out in a pained whisper; “ _None of this is fair, for anyone_ …”

“I know, Allura…”

Allura lets her porcelain-delicate composure slip for a moment, just a moment, crying quietly into her adviser’s chest as he rubs her back in slow circles, painfully aware of the memories she keeps trying to forget.

He was there. He understands in ways no other living being understands. Already he can feel her putting that mask on, hiding her pain again as her breathing levels out. But that doesn't mean she doesn't need to hear what he has to say.

“I know…”

 

Allura is there to catch the teenager when she stumbles out of the pod, guiding the teenager out of the bay and back towards her room across the Castle in a quick step before she’s even rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

“Get dressed,” the Princess nods, biting her lip when she glances down again at the bloodied shirt. “Breakfast will be ready shortly. I expect you there in twenty of your minutes.”

Pidge salutes, more sleepy than sarcastic, and nearly runs face-first into her doorframe.

Allura snickers into one hand. “Try not to send yourself back into a pod so quickly, Pidge.”

The Paladin sticks out her tongue and slips into her room as the Altean turns on her heel with an amused roll of her eyes.

 

Her hair is still in the miniature braid her mother left it in but when she reaches to undo it she finds she hesitates, so she leaves it in, tossing her nightclothes in a pile in the corner to be dealt with at a later time- even though she knows she really should get ahead if she wants to get a handle on that bloodstain. The scar on her side is so faint and faded she has to pull at it to be sure it’s even there and the dried blood flakes off as she rubs. She’s glad the stitches were the dissolvable kind.

An incision yesterday, ancient history today. Altean technology never ceases to amaze.

Her glasses and her computer are on the bedside table (when did those get there?) and she reaches for the frames out of habit.

Pidge settles the glasses on the bridge of her nose, the familiar light pressure strange after so long without, if only for a moment.

She squares her shoulders and faces the mirror, ready for the regular twist of pain that accompanies her altered visage, for the pain she feels when she could swear it’s her brother laughing back at her over some terrible joke she made and rolling his eyes with that warm, shining humor.

But when she turns it’s not Matt’s face she sees staring back at her.

She knew one day, some day, she would look less like her brother. She knew it was a possibility. A probability. Even as he had grown into his twenties he had very slowly started to look more and more like their father in his cheeks and his chin, even if he had his mother’s brows and nose. He had always looked like a blend of their parents, and Pidge had always assumed she would continue to look like a miniature of her brother. It had always felt like something that was just written in the stars.

The face in the mirror is not Matt’s. Even with the glasses, even with bedhead and bags so heavy she couldn’t take them as carry-on she could never mistake that face for Matt. Maybe if she narrowed her eyes, looked from a distance…?

The hair that frames her face is longer, darker, and she has her father’s cheekbones just beginning to peek through the softness of her young cheeks, but the face in the mirror is almost unmistakably her mother’s face (maybe minus a few years and smile lines) from the peak of her forehead down to the curve of her jawline.

She’s not sure what to do with this information.

She’s really not.

It happened so slowly over the past months she hadn’t seen it coming, but at the same time it feels like it happened overnight.

She still looks like herself, she’s still obviously _Pidge_ , but… she also looks like Rebecca. And Charlotte, in a way.

She’s not sure how to feel.

Instead she throws on the first thing she finds- tank top and sweatpants, the furthest thing from presentable-and ignores it, leaving the frames and their useless non-prescription glass on her face.

Besides- breakfast is calling and her stomach is _answering_.

 

She slips away after bringing her plate to the kitchen at the behest of a familiar pull.

The pull is situated just below her sternum, and it drags her back to the healing pods.

It’s the same pull that she and Hunk and Shiro and Keith all felt when Lance was healing. They had discussed it briefly while waiting for him to wake up; the Alteans had said it was part of the Paladin bond, and a strong, almost instinctive desire to protect and watch over each other when they were hurting was the first thing they’d develop now that they’d all properly bonded to the Lions- even though it had only been a few days, the ties that bound them to each other were powerful.

It only ever got stronger with time. Hunk had twisted his ankle one night; not bad enough to qualify for more than a day or two of rest, but all of them had immediately felt that pull to go to him and to make sure he was ok. He had shooed everyone out of his room after fifteen minutes of awkward but insistent doting, and when Pidge came back in the middle of the night to check on him Lance was passed out next to the Yellow Paladin’s door. Shiro woke the pair of them up (plus Keith, who had joined them at some point) and sent them all to bed an hour or two later.

Pidge’s sated stomach twists into knots as she rests one hand on the glassy side of the healing pod.

Her nightmares, her memories weren’t wrong in any way. She just didn’t have all the relevant data to understand exactly what it was she was seeing. What she had seen. What she had _remembered_. The flash of dark bruising on his neck wasn’t _bruising_ at all…

Even knowing the truth ahead of time, even being told outright, seeing it in person is something else.

Irregular soft purple blotches spill over Keith’s skin like watercolor paint. The largest she can see is a patch over his left eye that spreads up behind his shaggy hair and drips down over the side of his far more prominent than normal cheekbone. If it were only the purple, only the discoloration, she could almost write it off as odd bruising. The short, thick claws on his fingers and the noticeable point to his ears make it rather hard to do though. Though she can’t imagine why his Galra blood would only shine through now, a nervous part of her gets the feeling it has something to do with his injuries.

He’s still in the black undersuit, most of his armor scattered loosely around the pod- some of it is still attached in places, which means whatever state he was in it couldn’t have been good if they didn’t even have that much time to spare. Given the thick smears of dried red over white, she imagines there really wasn’t any time to spare at all.

A flash of a memory comes to mind, something the Green Lion remembers as she reclines in the shared headspace of her Paladin. The presence of the conscious Lion in her mind is really so normal after this long that Pidge had almost forgotten she was there; in fact, she hadn’t even noticed the Lion wake up until now. The thought rises to the forefront of her mind, pushed by tired paws. A memory of horses she had seen back on Earth that had been covered in black, brown or red splotches, animals that Green had been intrigued by. The teenager shakes her head gently and folds her arms, self-consciously slipping the right underneath the left. That scar had made breakfast more than a little awkward.

It’s not quite the right mental image, though she can certainly get where Green sees the comparison.

She doubts Keith would appreciate it though. She’s not nearly as close to him as she is Hunk or Shiro, but she figures after five months stuck together in the deepest parts of space and fusing in mind nearly every time she flies that she knows him well enough to know she’d get at least some _serious_ side-eye for the comparison.

“Nah, s’more like vitiligo,” she murmurs, mentally showing her Lion what she means. She doesn’t hear Coran coming up behind her until he’s only a few feet away, and it takes every ounce of self-control she has not to shriek in terror when the unexpected sound of his bright voice fills the room.

“What’s more like what now?”

Pidge whips around at his words, heart stuttering in surprise. The Altean simply shoots her an amused look, mustached lip quirking up on one side, before glancing back at the occupied healing pod with a more somber expression that reminds her just how old Coran really is. The weight of the emotion ages his face noticeably and sits heavily on his shoulders as he takes in the sight.

She waves one hand loosely in the air as she catches her breath. “I was just telling Green,” she says lightly, “that the marks on Keith’s skin reminded me of a condition humans sometimes have.”

He nods, stepping over to the pod control panel as she speaks. He fiddles with the display and hums curiously as he checks in on the machine’s progress.

“How extensive is your connection with your Lion?”

“I- what?” Pidge tilts her head, lips pulling together in a confused pout as her arms drop to her sides. Coran glances over his shoulder and stifles a laugh at her expression before turning back to the display.

“You mentioned instances of communication with your Lion at breakfast…” he says, nodding to himself as he turns from the display, satisfied with whatever he’s read. “And just now you were _telling_ it something. I wasn’t quite sure what you meant by it, what you mean when you’re communicating.”

Pidge shrugs loosely. She mentioned a lot of things at breakfast. “Feelings, ideas, pictures, memories, words-”

“Words?” His ears perk noticeably and she tries not to stare. “What do you mean by words?”

“I mean conversations,” she starts, not sure why her Lion talking to her is such a big deal. Green certainly hadn’t made it sound like anything more than a normal progression of abilities for a Paladin. Maybe slightly accelerated, but still within the range of normal. “Like we’re doing right now, with words and everything. She has a serious attitude.” The Lion pouts in her head playfully.

“That’s incredible,” the Altean murmurs, indigo eyes flicking toward the sleeping Paladin. “I wonder if the others have gone through the same shift.”

“What do you mean shift?”

Coran smiles, tilting his head in apology. The teenager sees a flash of her father in his face and her heart twists violently in her chest. “It took many years of rigorous training for the original Paladins to connect so deeply with their Lions, and even then it was a difficult thing for some of them to maintain. I can’t help but wonder why it happened so quickly for you.”

“Take your pick,” Pidge laughs, shaking the comparison out from her head to the quiet hum of concern of her Lion. She starts counting off on the fingers of one hand with each suggestion; “Untreated concussion, near death experience, something to do with the wormhole, there are so many variables it could have been anything.”

The Altean steps closer and rests a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I’m always here if you want to talk, Pidge. I know you’ve been through a lot recently. I may not exactly understand what it’s like to be a Paladin of Voltron, or a human, but I do know a thing or two about what it’s like to feel out of your depth.” He rolls his eyes fondly. “As well as you and the others have adapted, I’m sure all of this is well beyond your normal scope.”

Pidge folds her arms again and nods. “You have _no_ idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I projecting here with Pidge’s whole ‘looks almost exactly like her mom’ thing? Yes, yes I am.
> 
> The weird thing about writing partly out of order is that about a fifth of this chapter has been done since I posted I wanna say chapter six, but it’s probably even a little older than that. It’s mostly the part where Pidge is watching Keith recovering in the pod. I’ve been sitting on that section so long that it was weird to break it out. Probably going to be weirder to use older stuff later. I've got stuff I've been sitting on since day one.
> 
> If you’ve been holding off on reading ‘The Apprentice and the Morningstar’ to avoid spoilers fret not I am on it. Allura’s in-story reveal is coming as soon as I can make it happen. 
> 
> Given where we’re at it’s all going to be a reveal she has to make more than once, so that’s going to be fun.
> 
> And yes I made a Monty Python reference in the summary. And the chapter title. No I do not know why.
> 
> I probably tagged Keith too early since he's not awake yet, but give it another chapter or two. Probably two. I'm working on it.
> 
> At this point please just assume that if you leave a comment I will see it as ass-o-clock in the morning three days later because sleep and I have a weird relationship and I will squee and cry happy tears while the cats stare on in disdain because that is starting to look like what’s going to be my new normal now. If I could I would hug all of you. Or if you’re touch-adverse make you like a plate of nachos or something.
> 
> Should I tag this fic as angst? I feel like I should. Maybe. I dunno. I don't know what tags to use. I don't know what I'm doing. I really don't.


	18. Second Chances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (I think it took me longer to name this chapter than it did to write it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having a weird night so I'm going to leave this here, go put on some music, and spend a couple hours with my sketchpad.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy.

It’s easy to find ways to kill time by herself, Pidge finds.

With Coran running overtime on repairs, Keith _still_ in stasis, and Allura spending every waking minute sending out signals to every inch of the universe, she had a lot of time to herself. More than she’s used to, even for someone who loves nothing more than being left alone and will sneak out of bonding exercises the minute nobody is watching. But now she has too much time to herself. Almost.

And a lot of it she spends helping Coran, learning the ins and outs of the Castle of Lions that Hunk would normally help with, or doing the cleaning Lance would normally help with. If Allura isn’t busy the two of them sometimes go over the starmaps and talk about possible places to hide or go for resources when they have wormhole capabilities again. She tries to make herself useful when she can, to make use of all her time.

And a lot of her time she spends goofing off alone.

In any other context being lifted by the scruff and tossed bodily into the air by a mechanical cat the size of a small skyscraper would be _terrifying_.

But here and now it’s just fun. Still kind of scary, but mostly just fun.

Like a rollercoaster without any restraints.

It’s _practice_ , she reasons with herself. It’s not _just_ goofing off.

Now that Green has finally had her week to recover entirely she and Pidge are practicing using her jetpack to better control and slow her descents when the teenager jumps or when she falls. In the hangar, there’s plenty of room to practice without getting in anyone’s way.

Or startling the shit out of anyone when she jumps off of a forty story ledge. Or, in the case of the moment, when she asks her Lion to throw her so high she nearly scrapes the ceiling and briefly reconsiders her brilliant idea of going helmet-less.

“Open up, big girl,” Pidge hollers as she starts to maneuver her descent, trying her best to aim for the great Lion’s open maw. Now she finally, _finally_ has the chance to burn off some of her energy, and she’s hoping she can burn enough that she’s hit the pillows and black out again tonight.

Her imagination keeps getting away from her and showing her the worst when it comes to what could have happened to the Paladins she’s still separated from…

She savors the rushing air tangling the loose curls of her hair as she plummets in a vaguely controlled manner down between her Lion’s teeth, blocking out her other thoughts as she practices falling again and again and again over the afternoon until the calculations come instinctively and the motions are as natural as breathing.

 

Pidge spends most nights cooped up in her old room, now modified into a lab that is what she likes to call ‘carefully organized chaos’ and that she knows Hunk would call ( _and actually had in the past_ ) ‘a nuclear disaster waiting to happen’, working herself to sleep on any number of projects, and when she really struggles to unwind she does what Shiro always suggested and goes for a brisk walk through the Castle. He recommended jogging, actually, and sometimes dragged her or another Paladin for a run if he caught one of them doing nothing, but Pidge would sooner throw herself out the airlock right now than willingly _run_ in order to relax. She didn’t jog back home with Matt, no matter how much he pleaded, threatened or cajoled, there’s no way she’s going to jog in space.

But she does take long and brisk walks.

It’s a compromise.

And it helps her memorize the layout of the Castle, especially the parts nobody really goes into. She commits the entire layout to memory on the off-chance she might need it one day. She tries not to use the tablets to get around if she can help it.

So far she has maybe twenty-five percent mapped out. Most of the Castle, especially the lower layers, is still inaccessible right now.

So she wanders what she can access.

And she lets her mind drift as she pads barefoot in the darkness, following memory more than layout.

And wandering leads to a sudden clash of sleepy bodies, padding silently through the halls as haunted wraiths, and a flurry of fabric and a whisper of panic as they stumble backwards and apart. Allura stands there with her chest heaving, arms posed defensively in front of her, the long billowing sleeves from her rumpled nightdress swaying with her movements. She cuts an elegant figure in the dusty white fabric. Pidge’s stance nearly mirrors hers, but with far less grace, and with only a stolen shirt too large for her frame and boxers she looks far less like something out of an old fairy-tale and more like something you find in your kitchen eating all your cereal straight out of the box at three am.

Allura looks beyond exhausted, the midnight bags born of unholy stress under her eyes pulling at her face and making her look utterly dead on her feet. Pidge knows she looks no better.

At first the Green Paladin braces for a lecture, but Allura’s shoulders sag and the Altean just sighs softly as she tugs the shoulder of her nightgown up. “You can’t sleep either?”

Pidge blinks in surprise. “No…”

“Would you like some tea?” the Princess hums quietly, staring off into the empty space just past Pidge’s left shoulder. “We have some dried berry teas that are rather pleasant. I find they help me relax on nights like this.”

Pidge turns around to see the towering window behind her, lit up with the light of thousands and thousands of distant stars, hazy clouds of colored gas drifting and blooming in the ancient horizon. Shapes she never knew, constellations so wildly unfamiliar… Places so far they could never dream, and yet here she is… Her dad was right.

“That sounds nice, actually.”

The Princess faces her like she hadn’t been expecting that answer. Even as the two of them had grown closer, Pidge had always kept the Altean (like almost everyone else) at arms’ length whenever possible. Even when she openly admitted they were friends she still tried to maintain a sense of distance between herself and the others.

Pidge follows Allura to the kitchen, shuddering slightly at the cool air. The Castle is always a few degrees colder during the artificial night-cycle and it makes her seriously question her choice in sleeping pants right now. At least the thin layer of hair on her legs that she hasn’t taken a razor to in months helps. Maybe. Theoretically. It’s hard to say at this point whether or not it actually helps. It's not quite as scruffy as she had expected when she first let it grow.

The Altean digs through the cabinets for a few moments before pulling out a large, cylindrical silver and copper colored tin with swirling inlay, poking her head back in while Pidge digs through the shelves for a few cups.

“What are you wearing?” Allura questions quietly as she measures out the dried magenta berries and golden leaves from the container with a small spoon, scooping three modest spoonfuls into something that strongly resembles a very fancy looking teakettle. Pidge glances down at her clothes.

She stole the shirt from Hunk’s room, and the boxers were already in one of the boxes her mom insisted she take. They’re a pair that was technically Matt’s, once upon a time, but that she had stolen from him two years ago and refused to return because she liked the turtle pattern so much. She pulls at the shirt unconsciously and breathes in the familiar smell of a missing Paladin; “Dunno.”

“Would you like a proper nightgown?” the Princess questions, one elegant brow quirking up as she fills the kettle with water and sets it on the stovetop. “The tea should be ready by the time we get back.”

 

Whatever the moss colored nightgown is made of is absolutely heavenly, smooth like silk against her skin but warm against the slight chill in the air like a particularly plush cotton-blend. Nothing about it is practical- she’s sure if she’s not careful she’ll trip on it- but that doesn’t matter. The long billowing sleeves and the full flowing shift feel downright _magical_ to wear and Pidge can’t resist a little twirl, capping it off with a grin and a giggle as she smooths the fabric out.

Allura smiles warmly, resting her chin in her hand. “You should keep it. I rather think that shade of green suits you.”

“I can’t, it’s yours-” the Paladin starts, but the Princess already has a hand up to stop her.

“I have an entire closet of nightdresses. I think I can spare one for you,” she shrugs gracefully, turning toward the door. “The tea should be ready soon.”

The Princess pauses.

“Is there a reason you were wearing Hunk’s shirt?”

“No?”

Allura shoots an amused look over her shoulder. “I don’t think your answer should have been a question.”

Pidge isn’t sure how to take that. She tugs involuntarily on the sweeping bateau neckline of her new nightgown and frowns, picking up her folded clothes from the bed.

“No, there’s no reason,” she states firmly.

Allura shrugs, the twinkle in her eye dangerously mischievous. “If you say so…”

“I _do_ say so,” the Green Paladin squawks indignantly as the Princess slips out of the room with snicker barely muffled by her hand. There’s a flash of humor in the back of her mind that tells her that her Lion is laughing too and she rolls her eyes, storming out after the Altean as a strange and furious blush spreads over her cheeks. “ _I do say so, damnit_.”

 

They’re about halfway through a movie about talking dogs and flying houses that Pidge brought up on her computer and projected on the far wall of the designated living room when the Green Paladin notices the Altean’s eyes are glassy and unfocused, and her breathing hitches softly as she squeezes her tired aquamarine eyes shut in a slow, painful blink. Pidge sets her warm cup of tea (her fifth cup, Allura really wasn’t kidding when she said it was good) beside the kettle on the floating tray near their knees and turns toward the Princess.

“You don’t have to keep being strong for us,” Pidge sighs as she hits the pause button. “You don’t have to carry the weight of the whole universe on your shoulders. We can help, we carry some of it for you. With you. That’s kinda why we’re here… I know I’m no Shiro, or Hunk, and I can be kind of an asshole sometimes… a lot of the time, actually, but you can always tell me what’s going on if you want. You don’t have to keep it to yourself.”

“Zarkon wasn’t always the man he is today. He was a kind man, once.”

Pidge blinks in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting an answer, let alone an answer like _that_. She tucks her legs underneath her and leans closer, silently encouraging her friend to continue.

“There was a time, once,” Allura starts, treading carefully. She laces her fingers together around her legs and rests her cheek on her knees, forgoing all pretenses of propriety. “Once he could have taken me to the highest point of the Castle, pointed toward the ground, and told me to jump… and I would not have hesitated for a moment. It would never have crossed my mind. I trusted him with my life.”

“ _Why_?”

The Princess smiles wryly, a tired undercurrent to her words as she speaks. “I loved him once. I loved him like I loved Coran, the way I loved my father. I loved him until the moment an assassin nearly took my head off during the drafting of a peace treaty… I loved him until the moment I realized he would sooner see me dead than put an end to whatever machinations he had been working on during his absence.”

Pidge pulls her legs up into her chest as she listens, mortified and fascinated in the same breathless moment as she reels from the idea of someone trying to _assassinate_ Allura, let alone someone she knew, someone she loved and trusted. “His absence?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

Pidge gnaws on her lower lip as she nods, stomach churning nervously.

“He was the Black Paladin, once upon a time…”

The air leaves her lungs before she’s even fully registered that statement.

What Allura says next, murmured in the darkness only a thin breath above a whisper, blows Pidge away before she can even catch her breath.

“And I was his Apprentice.”

 

“I outranked my father. Before he put me in the cryopod I was the standing Black Paladin- I should not have been, but I was. I had not yet even been officiated but that hardly mattered once Galra came under Zarkon’s control and formally declared war against both Altea and against _Voltron_. My father was the Yellow Paladin; in that moment I outranked him even when he stood before me as the Altean King, even when he stood before me as my father. In times of war only the Black Lion stands above the others, above everyone.”

She had no idea- Allura had never even _implied_ …

“Even as an Apprentice, I was still the Black Lion. If I had pulled rank he would have had no choice. He would have been forced to follow me into war. We would have fought Zarkon on that day… On the day Altea burned.”

Pidge scoots closer on the couch and summons a gentle purr low in her chest as she leans into the Princess’ side. Allura leans back against her, a tiny smile quirking at her lips as she registers the low vibrations coming from her smallest Paladin.

“I was about to pull rank. It was so easy for me to forget I was the standing Paladin- I was an Apprentice with less than a year of mentorship- I was not meant to take my station for nearly two decades. And he was my father. My King. It was so easy to forget my position. He sedated me before I could even think…”

Allura trails off, her throat choking up as she struggles against the onslaught of raw emotion she can no longer deny.

“I don’t know how that fight would have ended, and I don’t know that I want to know. All I know is that I have been given a second chance, in the form of some very strange young aliens with some very _ugly_ little ears,” she teases, laughing, tears dripping from her eyes as she tugs gently on Pidge’s nearest ear. They glimmer like stars against the deep sepia of her skin in the low light. Neither girl holds their sniffling back as Pidge winds her arms around Allura’s waist and squeezes her comfortingly, the purr pained and strangled in her throat. She doesn’t know what to say… She can’t think of _anything_ that would even begin to help…

“I’m so sorry, Allura.”

The Princess pulls her Paladin closer and settles her cheek on the crown of her head, humming softly.

“It’s alright… I can’t change the past, history is already written, but I _can_ shape the future. I can right his wrongs. Besides,” she sighs softly, poking at Pidge’s sides and grinning faintly as she curries a few frustrated giggles from the girl, “now I have a sister. I’ve always wanted a sister.”

“You only say that because you’ve never had one,” Pidge laughs as she paws at her own face. “I’m pretty sure Matt would like to have some words with you about that. Something along the lines of ‘ _savor your freedom, baby siblings will destroy everything you love_ ’,” she muses, pushing her voice a few octaves down in affectionate imitation.

“I would say I’d like to see you try,” Allura chuckles as she brushes the back of her hand against her face, “but I know for a fact you can build a bomb with spare parts and scrap so I’d rather not tempt fate. I would like to keep the Castle in one piece, if you don’t mind.”

“I make no promises,” Pidge teases.

 

The two of them wake up slowly, snuggled together underneath a blanket that wasn’t there before, their cups long gone and heads propped by gently fluffed pillows. Pidge is tucked securely into Allura’s side underneath one arm and her head pillows the Altean’s still half-dozing against her.

For a flash of a moment Pidge imagines she’s curled up next to her brother after another movie marathon night and she sucks in a pained breath through her teeth.

It really doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to get easier.

But she knows her mother managed… Then again, her mother also knew she was never going to get her sister back. There was never that possibility, no matter how vague or distant it seemed.

She tries not to think about it.

Instead she snuggles closer to the woman she’s known for a few months but very slowly come to love with the kind of affection she’s always reserved for her brother, purring in quiet contentment at the warm security of being held by an older sibling again. The mice are spread evenly between their laps, having evidently noticed their favorite person was not in her bed, and they shift in their sleep as Pidge readjusts her legs and Allura yawns faintly.

Nobody bothers moving until it’s nearly lunch time.

It’s a good thing Pidge has so many movies on her laptop.

 

“I was wondering,” Pidge starts off, tugging gently at her sleeves to keep them from dragging into her food. “I’m probably only going to be about this size for the rest of my life, is there any training I can do with that in mind, like, _specifically_? Since most Galra are like eight feet tall and I don’t think I’m going to get more than another inch or two on me.”

It sucks to say out loud, but she knows it’s probably true. Her mom is maybe an inch taller than her after her latest growth spurt, standing at a level five-two, and her brother had stopped growing just under a head taller than that. Pidge could always end up her dad’s height, pushing five-ten, but she knows the odds of that are astronomically low. She would never bet money on a gamble like that.

At the request though Allura’s face _lights up_ and she’s clearly struggling to maintain a calm voice when she speaks.

“We can start training as soon as we’re done eating.”

Pidge nods, swallowing a sudden nervous lump in her throat as her gaze drops back toward the bowl of food goo.

If Allura’s utter delight is anything to go off of… Pidge is going to be very, _very_ sore later.

 

 _This_ is why she takes long baths.

 _This_ is why she’s currently twenty minutes in her most therapeutic, intense bath ever, sighing as she melts even deeper into the water just a few thin shades below scalding. When she lifts one hand from the water to push her damp hair out of her face the skin has a tender pink flush to it. Sore doesn’t even begin to describe how she’s feeling but she can’t find it in herself to think of a better word right now…

Allura effectively handed the girl her own ass so many times and in so many ways that Pidge had honestly stopped keeping count.

It was only after Pidge, facing off unarmed and exhausted beyond all reason, _finally_ managed to pull off one of the moves Allura had shown her and thrown the Altean across the room using her own momentum against her that the Princess had released her for the day. If the Paladin was being honest with herself it was almost dumb luck more than anything. But she had finally done it, fending off the at-the-time eight foot tall Altean with a relatively gracefully executed toss, and she had _earned_ this bath.

Six and a half hours of training, with a brief break in the middle for a very light snack, and Pidge feels like her entire body is just one giant aching sore spot. A lot of it was stance and theory and demonstrations, giving the Paladin the chance to breathe between bouts of brief, merciless combat, but there was still an awful lot of sparring.

“Knock knock,” a distant voice calls from outside the room in time to a soft tapping on her door.

Pidge pulls herself just high enough that her mouth is above the steaming water; “I’m in the bath, Allura.”

The Princess peeks her head in the open door several seconds later and smiles when she spots the Paladin sinking into the water. She’s still dressed in the same outfit she had worn earlier while she was showing Pidge no mercy- a sleeveless turtleneck shirt in vibrant blue, and a white pair of leggings that end at mid-calf and show off the lean, powerful muscles in her legs. The loose ponytail she had her hair in is undone and her curls spill freely over her shoulders, bouncing as she pads barefoot across the tile.

“I have a peace offering,” she teases, shaking a small glass bottle in one hand. Pidge narrows her eyes cautiously but doesn’t lift her face from the water again. “Oh hush, it’s perfectly safe. A few drops in the bath helps immensely with sore muscles.”

She pops the vial open with her thumb and pours out a few shining teal-blue droplets into the bath, nodding to herself as the steaming water adopts a rich opaque tropical flush. The tub is absolutely enormous, more like a small pool than anything. Pidge had showered beforehand, figuring it was really more of a soaking tub than a bathing tub, scrubbing the sweat off as quickly as she could while the tub filled with steaming salvation.

“I know I put you through quite a work out, but you made a lot of progress today,” the Altean says. Her voice takes on humored lit as she shrugs shamelessly. “If it helps you can have tomorrow off to recuperate before we do that again.”

“I appreciate that,” Pidge grumbles as she struggles to keep the smile out of her voice.

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Allura purses her lips. “There’s a secret elevator in the back of the wardrobe that leads down to the greenhouse. For the Paladins of the Green Lion it has always been an important place to focus and to hone one’s abilities.” She surveys the human in front of her for a moment with a contemplative expression. “I think your bond is deep enough that you’ll start developing unique abilities tied to your Lion’s quintessence.”

“The ability to manipulate plants, and apparently animals too.”

“So it’s already begun?” Allura murmurs as one elegant brow shoots toward her hairline.

“I found out the hard way back on Earth,” Pidge chuckles, remembering the incident with the bear with a sudden clarity. “Forest is a strangely broad concept.”

Allura nods, brushing a loose tendril of hair behind one long ear and bending slightly from her perch on the edge of the tub to trace a pattern in the warm water with two fingers. “In any case, the greenhouse is always available if you want to practice your _budding_ plant related abilities. Your predecessor often read in the greenhouse. He said it was the quietest place on the Castle, since almost nobody needed to be down there; the whole system is automated, so it grows and harvests and processes all on its own. Thankfully it started up when we first brought the Castle back online so we’ll start having more options for meals than a puree that doesn’t decay soon.” She grimaces lightly at the word ‘puree’ before flicking a few drops of water at her Paladin with a smile. “Just try not to get lost down there. It’s a bit of a labyrinth.”

“I make no promises,” the teenager mumbles as she sinks just low enough to open her mouth underwater. Allura splashes her again and Pidge retaliates by shooting a well-aimed stream of water at the Princess through her teeth.

The Altean blinks rapidly in surprise as she shifts her wet hair from her face with one hand. “Oh, it is _on_ ,” she grins, eyes flashing dangerously.

Pidge and the concept of regret quickly become well-acquainted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple of things:
> 
> All of the Paladins are going to start getting powers related to their various elements/aspects, in case that wasn’t painfully obvious already, so that is going to be super fun to write.
> 
> I see a lot of stuff where Pidge and Shiro have a sibling dynamic and I love it, and I want to see that applied to all of her relationships with the other people on the Castle (coughexceptmaybeHunkcoughcough). Pidge and Keith are one of my favorite brotp dynamics. I feel like they would be responsible for just the overwhelming majority of things going boom. But I wouldn't put it past Allura to get involved in those escapades either- I see her written as a mom figure a lot but I read her more as an older sister figure. She loves you but she'll utterly destroy you if you cross her, and she'll only let you get away with shit you shouldn't be doing if you bring her in on it.
> 
> Now that Allura has mentioned one of her big reveals, if you’ve held off on ‘The Apprentice and the Morningstar’ you can now go read that. Please do. It was a caffeine-fueled binge-write that took place over one of the most intense afternoons I have ever had and I’m kinda proud. My mom gave me some serious side-eye when I asked about one of the injuries that takes place in the story (when the aforementioned morningstar shows up) and I was just like, “I’m a writer just answer the question please I am in the zone right now don’t throw off my groove”. So that was medically accurate. I strive for medical accuracy whenever possible as a result of a lifetime of my parents bitching about inaccuracies in every goddamn show and movie we watch together and tearing apart the overwhelming majority of EMS related pop culture, while venerating the very few pieces that get it right. Of course I get my revenge and loudly bitch about various inaccuracies I see in media that they don’t notice or care about, so at least it’s not a one way street. The bitching is all mutual. Everyone suffers. My brother learned long ago to tune us all out.
> 
> Plus now it pisses me off just as much when I’m watching a show and they do weak-ass CPR, or some everyman protag gets shot in a Hollywood-noncritical area and shrugs it off even though it could horribly maim/kill them irl, or they pull some weird emergency medicine clean out of their ass and just wing it, so, you know, thanks mom and dad. Thanks for the basic first aid knowledge, the iron stomach, and the stick up my ass the size of a California Redwood. Dunno what I'd do without it.
> 
> Not sure if I'm totally satisfied with the pacing of this chapter.


	19. Bombshell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being blindsided by a secret is even worse when the secret is about you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you’ve all had a very happy holiday season so far.
> 
> Oh, I forgot, but now that everyone knows Allura was an Apprentice I can tell you: that ‘Mother of my Paladin’ speech she gave Rebecca in ‘Meant To Fly’ was something her father said almost word-for-word to her mother when she was chosen by the Black Lion. So, yeah. Extra layer to that bit of dialogue. I’m sure I’ll mention it in-story in like twelve or twenty chapters but for now I’m just saying it here because I can.
> 
> Sorry it’s been like ten days, there’s been a lot going on. And I’ve been distracted writing other scenes and chapters I’ve been planning (some stuff you will love, some stuff you will hate), and family stuff, and I’m still processing being blindsided by Carrie Fisher’s death from yesterday, so I’m just scatterbrained right now.
> 
> Also, I updated the tags. Decided to include Mama Holt because reasons. Yes, she's basically entirely an original character, but she's still a character in the series so there's my justification.

It’s a little strange, really. Pidge tried so hard to keep everyone at arms-length, to keep even the most modest sense of emotional distance from them all, and yet she still came to love every single one of their awful mugs. She still finds herself inexplicably and violently pained at the thought that any of them are hurting. She misses each lost Paladin like a limb.

In a strange way that’s almost how it feels. When they become Voltron she can feel herself not only in her own body, but as part of the machine, as the left arm, moving in tandem with the other limbs at the almost silent behest of the head that binds them all together. When she braces as their shield, she can feel herself functioning as the arm of Voltron, the way her own arm moves when it’s only her. She can feel the legs beneath her that support her as both people and as her own legs.

It wasn’t quite like that in the beginning, but as time went on that was what it became. And it’s not always the head that guides- if she wills it, if she needs it, she can override the others, and she does in a way when she braces their shield, when she takes command. The towering body of steel moves just a moment for her alone. And it goes the other way around. She’s been overridden by the others. She’s felt their impulses control her and her Lion.

It’s almost impossible to put into the right words.

And now she misses all of them like limbs.

At least she knows where one of them is.

It’s a little less painful than it could be.

 

After a late dinner of fried frangrell, a diced Altean _she’s pretty sure Coran called it a_ nara-fruit the size of her fist that tasted eerily like a large strawberry, and the standard food goo now served as a very filling side dish (thank the stars), Pidge finally gets around to unpacking her things.

She’s been putting it off ever since she got back.

It feels strangely final, in a way.

She saves the duffel bag she didn’t choose to bring along for last, as much as her curiosity eats at her. Pidge has no idea what’s in there and she is just dying to find out.

She doesn’t bother putting a lot of effort into storing or sorting her clothes. Everything gets strung up haphazardly in the closet if it can, and if not it gets stuffed gracelessly into empty drawers in a dresser near the bathroom door. She can’t remember ever folding her clothes if her parents weren’t hovering over her shoulder.

The unpacking goes by in a blur until _finally_ only the large blue-grey duffel bag is left, and she kneels beside it as she tugs the zipper open.

There’s a large plastic travel container on the very top of the things, lined with foil and closed with an opaque pink lid, and penned in a very tidy, small and blocky all-capital handwriting is a note on a slip on plain paper taped to the top.

_Katherine-_

_I thought you might appreciate having a touch of home, until the next time you can return. I tried to pack pragmatically since I knew most of the essentials were already accounted for._

_-Katya_

Pidge cracks the lid curiously and finds a small plethora of peanut butter cookies neatly stacked inside, packed in like sardines. She immediately snaps the box shut, joy and regret flooding her system when she catches a faint whiff of cookie as she takes a giddy inhale.

They’ve probably gone stale by this point, all dry and flavorless, but that doesn’t matter. She will treasure them all for as long as she can and probably cut off the hands of anyone who tries to sneak one.

She holds the box close and gives it a soft squeeze, setting it on her bed for later with a bright smile. Green rumbles affectionately in her head.

The bag is filled mostly with snacks and toiletries; miscellaneous things like painkillers and acne creams and instant coffee, bags of tea and packs of dehydrated instant soup, hair ties, batteries, menstrual products she doesn’t particularly need (but still appreciates) now that she’s back on the Castle and able to use the cup again, and a small box of loose flash drives in a number of colors and patterns. There’s another note, and in that same neat square handwriting is a description of the information on each of them. They’re mostly self-defense books and trauma-related therapy books in PDF form, although she notes a number of sci-fi novel collections among them. She’ll probably devour them all in a slow weekend. One of the series tickles familiarly in the back of her mind and she thinks it might be something another Paladin mentioned once.

She leaves anything edible in the bag, moving the rest into her bathroom or setting it on her bedside table beside her laptop.

There are also several packs of batteries, but for the life of her Pidge can’t figure out what those are for. She just tosses those in drawer until she can figure out a use for them later.

 

The minute she finishes unpacking she feels that _tug_ again. She kicks the empty duffel bag halfway under the bed as she passes it.

She’s been feeling it ever since she got on the Castle, and for the most part she’s left it alone, popping in to check on the recuperating Red Paladin every so often just to sate the concern in her chest, but this time it’s different. There’s a powerful undercurrent of restlessness to it. It’s the same restlessness she felt when she kept poking at the pod the last time and smushing her face into the projected glass. Green announces low in her brain what the young Paladin has already guessed at.

**_Should be awake soon. Red can feel it._ **

There’s a soft, unspoken whisper at the end of that thought. ‘ _Red doesn’t want him to wake up alone_.’ It’s a thought the Green Paladin can understand completely, all things considered.

“Coran said he had another couple of days though?”

**_Coran can be wrong. He is guessing for a biology we have not seen before. Red can not. She is with him. She knows._ **

“Fair enough,” the Paladin hums.

Pidge changes into her nightgown and she grabs her laptop and the flash drive Bora Gyeong gave her, creeping down through the dimmed hallways on feather light feet. She knows Coran is _supposed_ to be sleeping, Allura had insisted after he nearly set dinner on fire that he retire early- and if he didn’t go willingly she’d drag him to his room by his ankles. He drives himself into the ground the same way Pidge does if there isn’t someone there to stop him, so the teenager does not feel particularly inclined to wake him if she doesn’t have to.

Allura is likely finishing up her calls from the Castle for the night, if perhaps a little later in the cycle than she had promised Coran, and she should be going to sleep soon too. Pidge takes extra care when she travels through the usual hallways where the Princess might be haunting at this late hour and breathes a soft sigh of relief when she manages to make it down to the medical bay unnoticed.

Keith is still where he has been since she got here, in that strange healing stasis, breathing so shallowly it’s only because the machine still shows he has a pulse with a soft blue thrum of light that she knows he’s even breathing at all. The room is almost eerily silent compared to the hospitals on Earth and the darkness stretches the walls until they disappear into oblivion far above her head.

She curls up against the far wall across from the Red Paladin with her laptop and waits. Now is as good a time as any to use the drive to improve on the translator.

 

The Green Paladin jolts awake to the soft sound of a healing pod releasing. When she checks her laptop she notices she’s only been out for about an hour, though she’s been down here for four.

Pidge watches with sleep-blurry eyes as the cool mist dissipates into the open air and the glass fades from existence. The Red Paladin raises one hand to his face and presses the heel into his eye with a tired rub as he catches the side of the pod with his other hand.

The Green Paladin sets her laptop off to the side and pads over on bare feet, glancing up at Keith as he shakes his head out and his long dark hair slaps across his cheeks. She’s almost surprised when he opens his eyes and they’re the same deep shade of violet they’ve always been- part of her had honestly expected them to be the sort of bright yellow she’s seen on every Galran they’ve ever encountered.

But he is only half, so really she shouldn’t expect anything specific.

He grunts softly and she reaches out in case he stumbles as he moves down from the pod. One of his hands moves for her hand but freezes mid-air. His eyes suddenly blow wide, pupils shrivel into pinpricks, and the apple of his throat bobs as he flexes his fingers slowly in faint light.

She can see the growing horror and the confusion painting heavy over his features as his jaw opens and closes in wordless motions.

Pidge lunges as he recoils, her hands latching up around his wrists in a vice as he searches for an exit he isn’t going to find. His hands flex and his claws prickle lightly against her skin, thin little beads of blood bubbling up where the points pressed against her flesh. She ignores the fear washing over her in waves- she knows somewhere in the back of her mind that it’s not _her_ fear she’s feeling. Somehow she knows… _It’s Keith’s_.

She can feel an almost overwhelming sense of fear and confusion clouding all of her senses, and she knows it’s not her own.

“Calm down, look at me,” she demands, twisting herself to follow as he turns away from her, trying desperately to keep his frantic eyes on her as she clings to his forearms with all her strength. She knows in her gut the only reason he isn’t pulling her off like she _knows_ that he can is because he’s afraid of hurting her. “Look at me, please- _I’m not afraid of you just look at me damnit_!”

His whole body stiffens and it takes Pidge half a moment to realize she was nearly shouting.

She lets her grip on his wrists slacken just a little and when he doesn’t pull away from her she marks it down as a success. “Please, Keith, I’m not afraid of you. You’re my friend. I trust you. After everything we’ve been through, I trust you.”

“How are you taking this so well?” he rasps, blinking in surprise at the roughness of his own voice. Healing pod throat. Pidge lets her hands slip away and pulls them back against her own body with a half-shrug, tucking her arms together in a manner she realizes belatedly looks defensive.

“I had plenty of time to prepare.”

His eyes are so wide they look like they’re about to pop out of his skull and the disbelief and the confusion is painted in broad strokes over his features. He shouldn’t have found out like this. He should _never_ have been blindsided by this. He deserved the truth. Pidge bites her lip.

“I may have freaked out a little bit when I found out, sure, but I wasn’t upset about you. With you. That would be absolutely ridiculous, you didn’t know,” she sighs, feeling her words speeding up with every syllable. “You had a right to know and you weren’t told by the people who could have- _who should have_ told you. You had a right to know- you had every right and they kept that from you and that’s why I freaked out days and days ago while you were still out. But not at you. Never at you.”

“Pidge, Pidge slow down,” Keith says, hands raised placatingly. She lets out a breathy laugh as his altered features relax into a familiar confusion. The more things change, the more they continue to stay the same. “ _What are you talking about_?”

“I’m talking about the people who had an obligation to tell you the truth about your heritage,” she says carefully, letting out a long breath through her nose. “My mom knew your birth mom. Knows. Your dad too, but she kept in contact with your mom, obviously, since she was the human one. If nobody else, she should have told you the truth. She had plenty of opportunities.”

Keith takes a few half-steps back, only stopping when his back thumps roughly against the wall. He slides down the side until he’s sitting on the floor, elbows propped against his knees, new claws pointed carefully away from his body.

“You’ve met her?”

“Yeah,” Pidge sighs and settles herself next to him, leaving a good foot or so of space between them as she tilts her head back against the wall; she wants to prove that it’s ok, but she doesn’t want to push him too hard. It would be so much easier with Hunk here- he always seems to know just what to say. Hell right now she’d even take Lance, the man with a very vague concept of personal space and a personality as warm and grating on the eyes as sunshine. She glances around the room slowly as she picks her words. Somehow mentioning that he’s met her too doesn’t seem like the right thing to say. “I can tell you about her.” Pidge snorts dryly as she follows up, “I mean if you _ask_ , anyway; she made me promise not to tell you if you didn’t specifically ask first.”

The heel of one hand presses into his forehead as he turns to look at her. His voice waivers slightly as he laughs, eyes unfocused, “Maybe later. Not… not now. Thanks though.”

Pidge gives Keith’s shoulder an affirming squeeze, smiling softly. His hand twitches like he’s going to squeeze back before he flinches away, keeping his hands to himself, and his head dips forward toward his knees. He exhales slowly and flexes his hands open and closed in a steady tempo, watching the digits with pursed lips.

“ _Holy shit_ …”

“My virgin ears,” Pidge gasps softly, pressing one hand to her chest in mock horror.

There’s a tired bark of a laugh from the Paladin beside her and he bumps her with his shoulder. “Bull _shit_ , Pidge. You swear more than any of us.”

“That is true,” she hums thoughtfully.

“You’re going to turn the rest of Shiro’s hair prematurely white because of it.”

Pidge grins. “That is _also_ true.” That manages to curry a soft chuckle from the Red Paladin and she feels the tension she hadn’t noticed building in her shoulders start to unwind.

A beat of silence passes. Then two.

“You want a nail file?”

Another moment of silence.

“Sure.”

 

“… What are you wearing?”

“Allura gave it to me.”

“That… doesn’t really answer the question.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He shrugs as he files diligently at the sharp ends of his nails. Claws. Nail-claws? “I like the hemline.”

Pidge looks down and tugs at the bottom of the dress, looking at the bottom edge for the first time. The hem is embroidered with sprinting lions in soft glimmering shades of green, and twisting curls of plants the Paladin assumes are some kind of stylized alien ivy.

“Oh Allura,” Pidge smiles, “damnit that’s sweet.”

They’re sitting on her enormous bed, Keith with the ankle of one foot propped on his knee at the far end while Pidge sits with crossed legs and leans back into the pillows, her laptop warming her thighs through her nightgown.

The program update she was working on before she dozed off seems to be a modest improvement. It’s less of a search-engine word-to-word translator and more of a basic but proper translation matrix that actually understands context and nuance. Some words still don’t translate, but now the grammar is readable and the words that do translate have the option for other meanings- so it’s easier to determine what exactly the intention was when a word could mean ‘asteroid’, ‘moon’, or ‘planet’ depending on context.

So far she’s liking what she’s seeing. There was a lot of data she couldn’t understand that she can read now. She gnaws gently on one side of her cheek when she glances up at the other Paladin stubbornly trying to maintain a sense of normalcy by not addressing the elephant in the room. He changed into other clothes and left his armor to be dealt with at a later time in his old room, and he’s now stubbornly pretending nothing has changed while wearing a bouncy ponytail and a borrowed pair of Pidge’s sweatpants. She figures she may as well cater to the desire for normalcy.

“Hey, how long did you go to the Garrison? Before… before the Kerberos thing, I mean.”

He doesn’t even miss a beat. “Three years. Why?”

Keith’s eyes narrow as Pidge’s light up. She pinches her lips together as she struggles to control her grin, the cheeky delight radiating off of her in waves. He does not like the look of that face, whatever the hell it means.

“ _Why_?”

She can’t contain it. It’s too _funny_. “You were Shiro’s duckling!”

The look he gives her is so flat it could go braless.

“What.”

“Matt said Shiro had a cadet that followed him around like a little duckling,” she laughs, a giddy purr brimming in her bones. “Three years, a shaggy haired duckling. That’s _adorable_!”

The way Keith’s cheeks puff out and flush with embarrassment certainly don’t help his case. Pidge reaches over and pokes the air out of his cheeks with a broad Cheshire grin.

“A-do-ri-ble,” she laughs, poking him with each syllable. He smacks her hand away and shoots her a ferocious glower that would be _much_ more effective were it not for the tiny smile tugging at one side of his mouth.

“Why are you like this?”

“It entertains me.”

That exchange is older than she can remember. A brother asking in bemused frustration, a sister grinning like a gadfly, and she feels a violent hiccup of pain in her stomach the moment she finishes her retort. The Red Paladin picks up on the sudden dip in mood and tilts his head a little lower, looking at her with concern and curiosity. She smiles wryly and waves her hand loosely-

“Just kinda tired.”

He doesn’t buy it for a second and she knows it.

“You know, as much as you’ve talked about finding your family, you’ve never said much about them.”

“It’s hard, sometimes,” she shrugs, tugging her crossed legs a little closer to her body and pulling her laptop until the edge is pressing into her stomach, “because this silly part of me worries I’ll jinx myself, but if I don’t say anything at all, then I can’t say the _wrong_ thing.”

“You don’t want to use past tense, do you.” It’s not a question.

She shakes her head. Her throat burns just a little and makes it too hard to speak.

“Past tense makes it final, like it’s not just some awful dream.”

Pidge nods. She knows the odds… She carries on despite them, to spite them, in spite of them, but she knows the odds. She knows that the chances grow slimmer with every passing day and she accepts that despite her hope there may come a day when the only closure she will get is in the form of a digital death certificate… Keith shifts until he’s sitting directly next to her on the bed and sighs softly.

“I understand.”

The teenager’s brows furrow together and she glances over at her fellow Paladin.

“You know how Lance joked for like a full week about how he would unlock my ‘tragic backstory’, and finally my only response was ‘Kerberos’? It shut him right up, but it wasn’t the full story, not by a long shot,” Keith huffs, a bemused smile tugging at his face, “I was fucked up before Kerberos. Though Kerberos fucked the both of us up pretty hard, didn’t it?”

She punches him gently. “Yeah it did. I was a goddamn mess.”

“So I’ve heard,” the taller teenager snickers, raising his hands defensively when Pidge’s jaw drops with offense. “Nobody gets caught breaking into a government facility in the dead of night and threatened with charges of treason when they have all their shit together.”

Pidge corrects him instinctively. “Twice.”

“What?” He tilts his head slightly and one of his ears twitches.

“They caught me twice. The treason threat was after the _second_ time they caught me.”

Keith’s eyes narrow in amused concern. “How many times _didn’t_ they catch you?”

“Three.”

She bumps his offered fist with a grin.

“In any case,” he sighs, leaning back into the small mountain of pillows, “I won’t bore you with the details, but I know what it’s like to lose your whole family. I know what it’s like to end up all alone and confused and angry, wanting nothing more than to go back to the way things used to be.”

He glances over, furrowing his brows at the way she tilts her head.

“… I’m assuming aren’t I?”

“Yes?”

“You have family back on Earth, don’t you?”

Pidge nods.

He looks away awkwardly. “You never mentioned, so I guess I assumed…”

“It’s cool. I don’t blame you, I- honestly, I spent so much time looking forward that I never thought to look back. I tried really hard not to. Didn’t have the choice recently, after that whole wormhole mess, but, yeah…” She sighs weakly. “After what happened to the Hecate VI crew on Kerberos it was just my mom and me. I actually almost brought her with, you know; I’m sure Allura would have torn me a new one, but that wouldn’t have stopped me. It didn’t, actually, because I still tried.”

She can see him take a second to pick up his jaw from the floor. “It spit you out back home?”

“Right by Kerberos, actually,” she laughs, the sound frustrated to her own ears as she considers the source of so much pain, the thing that drove her (and her fellow Paladin) into the desert and eventually to where she is now, “but close enough. Long story short my mom is a secret badass and I tried very hard to get her to come with when it came time for Allura to pick me up.”

Everything comes back at once and she hiccups, exhaling in surprise when Keith drapes one arm over her shoulder and pulls her over to lean a little awkwardly against his side. He’s warmer than she expected. A lot warmer. A tiny part of her questions if it’s something to do with his Lion, but she doesn’t bother poking Green awake to ask her and instead just relaxes into the warmth.

It’s an awkward gesture, but it’s comforting.

“I’m pretty sure Hunk wouldn’t have appreciated the competition for his position as Team Mom,” he huffs quietly. Pidge snorts so hard her whole body contracts.

“Probably not, no.”

She feels it coming long before he opens his mouth.

“Is that when you met…?”

She can feel the confusion, the questions, the simmering emotions underneath it all, radiating out from where she’s leaning against him and Pidge nods to answer the unasked question sitting on his lips. Keith grunts softly in acknowledgement.

“In any case, I know how it feels to lose the people you love,” he murmurs. “I understand. It’s ok.”

“Thanks.”

 

They eventually creep across the Castle to the Red Lion’s hangar, Pidge following behind the Red Paladin as they slip through the dark hallways.

Scars belt around his abdomen, but the marks are worst where he can’t see them. His back is absolutely streaked with scars, and Pidge can see where there was a large sliver of debris jammed into one of his kidneys- she knows that’s what it was because she’s seen a similar scar on Lance. Not nearly that big, but certainly about that ugly and in that spot. The new mottled dull purple markings splash across his skin with no rhyme or reason to their patterns, swirling through and around scars as they please.

Red is sprawled on her side, mangled so badly the pair of them freeze on bare feet at the entrance to her hangar. Pidge glances up at him, and then back over at the Lion.

“Can you still feel her?”

The Red Paladin nods.

He takes a tentative step in, waiting for the golden eyes to flash awake the way they always do when he’s near her.

“Maybe she needs more. She’s hurt pretty badly.”

The older teenager pads slowly across the hangar until he’s all the way at her head and his hand reaches to bridge the last gap between boy and Lion. Keith sets one hand gently against the giant metal ear and the resulting purr from the Lion is so loud it’s almost more of a delighted roar as it echoes through the hangar and jolts the two of them right out of their skins.

“I think she missed you,” Pidge laughs as the sound begins to die down, digging one finger in her ear with a teasing grimace.

“Yeah, I’m getting that impression,” Keith smiles as he pats the Lion awkwardly. He suddenly freezes, spine stiff, and furrows his brows.

“She talking to you?”

He nods slowly, looking at the other Paladin curiously.

“Green and I have been talking a lot lately,” she shrugs, adjusting her glasses. “You get used to it. I think it’s got something to do with that corrupted wormhole business, but I also wouldn’t bet money on it.”

“How long was I out?”

She pauses, considering. “Almost three weeks, I think.”

His dark eyes are wide- Lance had only been in for a handful of days after his own brush with death, and he had brushed dangerously close.

“Do you remember…?”

The taller teenager shakes his head and purses his lips. “If I had to be in that long, I’m not sure I want to remember what put me there.”

The young Green Paladin nods, trying not to glance at his back again.

“Fair enough.”

His stomach growls ferociously and Red rumbles in a way that Pidge swears is her way of mocking the noise. Keith blushes and smacks the ear weakly, pinning his own ears back as he grumbles at the cat and Pidge would gladly guess that she was right on the money.

Pidge snickers, glancing away in a manner that is not at all inconspicuous when the grumpy Paladin rounds on her. “I dunno about you but I am _hungry_ ; are you hungry?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith is finally awake yay. Took forever to get this chapter done. 
> 
> For the Voltron thing and individual Paladins taking over for a second, that was kind of my explanation for when Lance did the kick that didn’t work nearly as well as he’d hoped it would. Like, for a moment his energy was the dominant energy, for a moment he overrode the others. For the most part it’s everyone working together, with Shiro in charge and kind of filtering everyone, but not always. 
> 
> I feel like I worded the power thing weird in the last update. For Pidge my thought is that she can manipulate plants directly, but with animals it’s more that they react to her emotional state or her needs- if she’s in danger they’ll protect her, and even highly volatile animals will let her pass through their territory untouched where they would maul someone else. She can’t make them do anything specific, but she can ask for help.
> 
> Like with the bear- the bear was more or less reacting to her as if she were a cub in distress. I actually read something a while back about a girl who was protected by lions when she was abducted from her home and I remember reading some zoologists suspected it was in part because her cries sounded like a young cub in distress. Which, considering domestic cats and kittens can imitate the exact frequency a human infant cries at and this noise triggers the desire to issue an immediate response in humans (also speaking from experience on that, foster kitties are a trip and a half), is actually a pretty reasonable theory.
> 
> ALSO, should I tag eventual ships? Like Shiro/Allura is absolutely going to happen, should I tag that and like specify it’ll happen eventually? And do you have any tag suggestions for this fic? Anon is always on over on tumblr if you’re shy- I know I am. 
> 
> Which reminds me, tumblr anon from the other day, I got your message, I didn’t know how to reply but it made me smile, and I hope you’re having a good day.
> 
> I'm going to try to reply to comments again, going to see if I can't get in the habit of occasionally answering because I love all your comments and you guys are awesome.


	20. Questions and Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A touch of domesticity on the Castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I didn’t do a lot of replying last time, but that’s because it’s very hard to translate blushing and grinning into text.
> 
> Every single time I look at the tags on this fic I have to double-check to make sure I wrote menstruation, not masturbation. Every single time. It’s like a terrible mental autocorrect; I do the same thing with other words, like ‘Bilbo’ autocorrects to ‘dildo’ in my head every time. Not too sure what that says about me.

“Question.”

“Answer.”

Pidge taps the spoon against the kettle to loosen any stubborn leaves or berries clinging to the surface and hums contemplatively. She shifts the sloshing kettle over to the stove before turning around. “Back on Earth, how much of an ‘aliens are real’ conspiracy kind of guy were you, on a scale of one to ten?”

Keith leans his elbows on the counter of the kitchen island and sighs, head flopping forward in shame even as he laughs at the obvious irony. His ponytail slaps his forehead as it flips over his head. “… Like, a twelve…”

“We would have totally been conspiracy bros,” Pidge laughs, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms, “that would have been great. In another universe maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to throw Lance off the roof all the time if there was someone to balance him out.”

The older teen snorts, grimacing fondly. “No, you would have still wanted to throw him off the roof. He was loud and annoying when I went there too.”

“We’d have thrown him off the roof together then. Alibied for each other,” she nods decisively. Keith contemplates for a moment before shrugging, an amused smile quirking at his lips.

“Probably.”

They wait in companionable silence until the tea is ready.

When Allura walks into the kitchen a few minutes later it takes every ounce of self-control her Paladins have not to burst out laughing right then and there. Her hair is rumpled and sticking almost straight up on one side, there are bags under her eyes so heavy it’s a miracle she’s still upright, and there’s a distinct imprint of a console on her face. The Green Paladin can’t help but notice she’s wearing the same outfit from yesterday too.

“Yikes… Late night?” Pidge snickers softly. Allura narrows her hazy sleep-fogged eyes and crinkles her nose in mocking disdain as she reaches for the tea kettle.

“Good morning to you too, Pidge,” the Altean grumbles.

The Princess pulls a cup out of the cabinet and blinks a few times, only just now noticing the third person in the room shifting his weight from foot to foot. She greets him in turn as she pours out a steaming cup of the rosy colored tea for herself, the tone of her voice significantly more cordial toward the other Paladin.

“And good morning to you, Keith. I’m surprised you’re out so soon.”

The Red Paladin glances over at Pidge, and she only offers him a shrug in response. Allura’s eyes narrow in obvious if sleepy curiosity at the exchange and she sets the kettle back on the stove.

“What?”

“That’s it?” Keith tilts his head slightly. “Good morning? Nothing… nothing else?”

Allura purses her lips and cradles her mug with both hands. “ _Should_ there be more?”

The Red Paladin gestures to himself with both hands. The Princess frowns softly.

“Why are you shirtless?”

Pidge doubles over as she violently laugh-coughs in surprise and Keith’s cheeks flush slightly.

“ _That’s not what I meant_ …”

The Princess takes a tentative sip, glancing between the teenagers as she racks her brain. “Do you mean- the Galra thing, yes?”

His shoulders drop and he takes a second before nodding slowly in quiet disbelief.

“I already knew. I assumed you all did, at least eventually,” she glances at Pidge, one eyebrow quirked in curiosity. “Did you not?”

“I didn’t even know,” Keith says, pulling his cooling half-full cup sitting on the counter toward himself. “How did you know?”

“The scans the Castle took when you all arrived,” Allura nods, as if it’s really so simple, so obvious. “I checked them about two months ago, since I never got around to it before then, and I noticed some anomalies, and Coran and I made a few comparisons… After that it seemed rather obvious. You’re hardly the first person with parents from different planets.”

She takes a long sip from her mug, blinking slowly as she savors the tea.

“Honestly, we thought maybe you didn’t want to talk about it with us because you thought we might view you differently, so we decided we would wait for you to bring it up. It didn’t seem fair to do otherwise.”

Keith chews faintly on the inside of one cheek for a moment.

“… Do you?”

The Altean tilts her head and flicks her ears curiously. He sighs before continuing.

“View me differently?”

Allura huffs indignantly. “ _Of course not_.”

“But I’m…”

“You’re the Red Paladin, you’re Keith, you’re our friend,” Allura lists off on her fingers, yawning briefly in the middle. “And you’re part human, and part-Galra. Simple facts, aspects of who you are, as much as I am Altean royalty or Pidge is adorable.”

“ _Hey_!” Pidge squawks, stumbling slightly and nearly spilling her own drink when Allura hip-checks her with a teasing smile.

“But don’t you have that whole thing against the Galra?”

“Zarkon, really, and anyone who helps him.” She sighs softly. “I’ve had friends from all across the universe, including among the Galra. I mean, _stars_ , one of my uncles was Galra; he married my mother’s cousin and spoiled me positively rotten as a child. I hold no ill-will to them as a whole. I could never, even if I wanted to…”

She takes a long sip from her cup, staring into the steaming liquid with a contemplative expression on her face.

“I must admit, I’m surprised you didn’t know. I’m surprised your mother never told you. I mean, I suppose I _understand_ , since until recently you looked entirely like one species, and apparently your world is still relatively isolated from the rest of the universe, but still it seems strange that she would never have mentioned it to you…”

Pidge is quietly flailing and making sharp, panicked slashing motions across her neck as she desperately tries to get the Altean to _stop talking please stop talking_. Allura notices the Green Paladin’s panic far too late.

“I was adopted, actually,” Keith sighs, not quite making eye contact as he takes a drink from his cup. “Did not know my birth parents.”

Allura’s eyes widen almost comically. “Well, that explains it.” She pauses, turning to the Paladin beside her, murmuring in a low voice. “Was she who I thought…?”

Pidge purses her lips and gives the Princess a tiny nod. She knows exactly what the Altean means.

“Hm.” Allura takes a very, very long drink from her cup, finishing the rest of it without pausing. “Well then, since I did indeed have a long night,” she glances at Pidge, “I’m going to go lay down for a little while. Let me know if you need me.”

 

Coran’s doting mother hen instincts are no joke.

He walks into the kitchen while Pidge and Keith are putting away their dishes from breakfast and immediately launches into a spiel about how Keith should really not be up and about yet, and how he should really take it easy for a few days, and how’s his head feeling, and before the Red Paladin can even get a word in edgewise the Altean is already shooing him out of the kitchen and threatening to fluff his pillows.

Pidge laughs as the older Paladin is quite literally dragged off to his room to rest against his will when he _unwisely_ insists that he’s fine.

It doesn’t last too long; a few hours later while Pidge is sprawled on the couch in the designated living room with her laptop on her belly and her legs over the back edge she hears footsteps trying far too hard to be stealthy to be either Altean moving through the common room. She takes a shot in the dark and hits a bullseye.

“Oh, hey, you gonna go train?”

She doesn’t need to lift her head to know she startled the hell out of her fellow Paladin. His reply is clearly a little strained as he sighs.

“Yeah.”

Pidge pushes herself up with one hand, closing her laptop between her thighs and her stomach. “Can I come with?”

“Why?” He’s fully armored up- instead of resting he must have spent his forced period of relaxation cleaning and polishing off his uniform, and the Green Paladin feels a twist of nauseated discomfort at the idea that he spent the past few hours cleaning off his own dried blood from his armor.

“There’s nothing else for me to do, duh,” Pidge rolls her eyes. Mostly she’s just bored. And restless. None of her projects appeal to her enough to hold her attention right now; hence, her second hour of laptop solitare. “Besides, I could use the practice.”

Keith’s mouth twitches but his expression stays carefully neutral.

“I’ve seen you on the training deck, Pidge.”

She squawks indignantly- “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m afraid of kicking your ass too hard,” he chuckles, shaking his head.

Her cheeks flush bright red and she straightens her shoulders before shooting the older Paladin a withering death glare. It would admittedly be much more intimidating if she weren’t so small. And if she weren’t glaring at him from between her own feet presently adorned in purple fuzzy socks. “ _Meet me on the fucking deck_.”

 

“I’m going to kick your ass,” Pidge glowers from where she’s still sprawled flat and breathless on the floor, staring menacingly at Keith’s offered hand as he stands above her with an amused smirk. So maybe round one did go quite the way she had hoped.

There was still always the chance she’d turn it around in round two. Theoretically.

Keith snorts. “Bring it, sister.”

And Pidge’s face _lights up_.

Right before she grabs his wrist in both hands and pulls, using her lower gravity and her free legs to propel him over her head and across the room before he has the chance to react. He hits the floor with a heavy whump that she can feel down in her bones.

The Green Paladin sits up on her elbows and crows brightly; “Allura taught me that one.”

“It’s a good one,” the Red Paladin wheezes. Pidge can see one hand raise off the ground slightly into an awkward thumbs-up. “You’re gonna have to show me that one again.”

“Actually,” she says, cracking her neck out as she stands back up and tugging her arms over her head, “let’s try bayards.”

Keith gives her a very pointed look as he works his way back into a standing position.

“What?”

“I have a reach advantage. A pretty significant one.”

Pidge rolls her eyes and summons out her inactive bayard from its storage on her thigh. She bites back a snarky quip about how _size doesn’t matter_ because, as much as it pains her, it’s also hypocritical considering what she’s about to show off.

“Just roll with me for a second.”

The Red Paladin quirks one eyebrow before shrugging and calling for his own weapon. “Your funeral, then- _wait when the hell did you get a spear_?”

“It’s a new option,” Pidge preens brightly, twirling the summoned weapon with perhaps a little less grace than she would like. “Apparently a bayard can suit your needs, or your desire when you get good enough. This is now one of my weapons.”

Keith purses his lips and his expression goes flat for a moment, the way Pidge realizes her own face gets when she’s listening to her own Lion, before he exhales softly and nods. The blade of his sword retracts, and several long seconds pass, before there’s a brilliant flash of light and…

The Red Paladin cracks his neck and bows the blade of his new spear toward the ground with a confident huff. Where the glowing blade of her weapon is leaf-shaped and sleek, simple almost, the blade of his spear is a long diamond and serrated in such a way so that when it’s pulled out of whatever it goes into it shreds the tissue viciously upon exit. Elegant in form but clearly deadly.

“Are you shitting me right now? I had to fuck up my ankle to get this spear,” the Green Paladin gapes. “Are you _shitting_ me?”

“What can I say,” he teases, “I’m a prodigy.”

Pidge tries to keep the amused smile from disrupting her pout. “At least mine’s also a taser…”

The doors to the training deck open suddenly with a soft _whoosh_.

Allura’s face lights up the moment she walks through the doorway. Pidge immediately and instinctively wishes for the sweet release of death because she knows what comes after the Princess makes _that_ face and she wants no part of it. Keith swallows faintly but stays frozen in his spot. The mice all riding comfortably on her shoulders pick up on her spike in mood and scramble off of her with quiet squeaks.

“I was just coming in to grab something, but if you’re training, I’ll join you,” Allura announces, taking her shower-damp hair and twisting it up into a casually sloppy bun on her head. Her announcement leaves no room for dissent, no space for argument, and before either Paladin can get a word in edgewise she’s tapping open a secret panel on the wall and pulling out a weapon neither of them knew was there.

There’s an entire array of Altean weaponry in the hidden wall compartment; swords, staves, spears, a few blasters of various makes and models, melee weapons of nearly every possible style, and a few designs so alien that the teenagers have to wonder how they’re used at all.

Allura twirls a staff longer than she is tall with clearly weighted ends with the kind of ease that comes from relentless training, sliding into a few whip-quick strikes as casually as if they were simple yoga poses.

“An old favorite of mine. It’s not exactly a spear,” she laughs, twisting it to rest lengthwise across her shoulders as she grins as her Paladins with a dangerous sparkle in her eyes, the muscles in her arms and shoulders flexing in anticipation, “but it will still be good practice for all of us. Besides, it’s not too different from your own weapon, Pidge, so the two of you should learn all of this rather quickly.”

“Wait wha-”

Cold fire courses through the Green Paladin’s muscles and her arms spasm in violent tension before her entire body suddenly feels numb and tingly and her knees threaten to give out beneath her. She blinks in surprise as Allura pulls the weighted end of the staff back with a radiant smile, the end of it still crackling faintly. Pidge coughs as she realizes.

Mild electric shock. _That’s_ what she meant.

Oh boy…

Keith is already leaping backwards as Allura lunges for him next, swinging his spear up to block the way he would normally swing a sword. It keeps the crackling tip of her weapon from hitting him, but only barely, and she moves on him with the confidence of a tigress in repose and the speed of one aiming for a quick and mercilessly bloody kill.

_Jab jab jab_

“ _Shit shit shit_!”

“Really, Keith,” Allura laughs, twisting around and swinging the side of one weighted end toward his chest as her Paladin dances away by the skin of his teeth, “must you swear so much? It’s unbecoming!”

Her aim is true and she knocks the Red Paladin back on his ass before he can register her change in moves, the lightning-fast switch from thrusting jabs to sweeping swings, and he hits the ground with an echoing thud and a grunt. A few of her damp curls swing freely as she twirls back around on bouncy feet to face the Green Paladin. If Pidge makes a startled (not frightened, only _startled_ ) squeaking noise high in her throat when blue eyes meet hazel, nobody comments on it later.

 

Allura only lets up once the two Paladins are both unable and unwilling to stand back up. The latter comes _well_ before the former, but it’s only when they are both that she stops.

“This whole ‘sink or swim’ thing you’ve got going,” Pidge moans softly from where she’s still sprawled face-down on the floor, refusing to move as she’s nudged with a gentle foot to her ribs. “I am not a fan. Not at all.”

Keith groans nearby in obvious agreement. He’s on his back, the crook of one arm covering his face, still breathing a little heavily as he tries to make his aching muscles relax.

The Princess snorts. “You don’t need to enjoy my training methods for them to work.”

“I fail to see how beating the living shit out of me is training,” Pidge grumbles weakly, twisting her head just enough to look at the Altean and give her a half-hearted glower.

Allura folds her arms over her chest and rolls her eyes. “It teaches you not to get near the business end of my staff. It teaches you to _move_.”

“Debatable,” the Red Paladin grunts. “ _Very_ debatable.”

Pidge sighs. “Agreed.”

“You’re a rather mutinous pair aren’t you?” Allura chuckles as she flips Pidge onto her back with one foot. “But not only are you learning to move, you’re bonding.”

“Over shared bruises and rage,” Pidge laughs. She cringes and holds her side, the jostling motion uncomfortable in her chest.

“Bonding is bonding,” the Princess shrugs confidently, hands on her hips. “I’ll take what I can get.”

One of the mice scurries over to perch on Pidge’s chest, nose twitching as it tilts its head and blinks at her with wide eyes. It’s the littlest one with soft periwinkle fur and bright blue irises and it chirps at her with its tiny musical voice.

She’s not sure what it’s trying to say, but she has an idea. She covers her face with her arms and sighs dramatically. “Leave me here to die…”

“She was asking if you wanted an early dinner,” Allura laughs, dropping into a crouch and cradling her hands so that the mouse in question can jump in. “No need for such dramatics yet.”

“ _Yet_ ,” Keith laugh-coughs, sitting up and propping his elbows on his knees. “I appreciate the clarification of ‘ _yet_ ’, there.”

Allura rolls her eyes fondly.

“In either case, I’m going to have an early dinner. You two can join me if you wish or you can lay here whining and tending to your bruised pride some more- it’s up to you.”

 

Allura dices the alien vegetables slowly, clearly more at home with a sword than a kitchen knife. Keith offers to take over, taking the cutting board and the blade from the Princess with little complaint as he dives right into a steady, rapid chopping motion. Pidge takes the diced tubers and vegetables and tosses them into a colander for rinsing. A sudden idea perks the Altean’s ears and she glances between her young Paladins.

“Can your Lions sense the others?”

Pidge pokes at her Lion. Green’s default state of operation seems to be half-asleep; ready at a moments’ notice for danger or for conversation, but normally existing in a state of energy-saving repose and only half-aware of her Paladin. So, like a normal cat, only _bigger_. And with more lasers. And more attitude.

The Green Lion’s rumble as she answers the unspoken repeated question is painfully morose. **_Ten thousand years divided and a roar across the cosmos I once heard like my own can barely come to me as a whisper now. I can tell you when close, but I cannot tell you where. I wish I could._**

“Not the way you need,” Pidge sighs. Keith grunts softly in agreement, face entirely focused on the cutting board.

Allura exhales softly as she starts gathering dishes.

“It was worth a shot.”

Pidge only nods, handing a few raw cubes of vegetables over to the mice waiting patiently on the counter beside her.

 

It’s only when she’s snapped out of her focus that Pidge realizes she never went to bed last night. There’s a soft knock outside her door, followed by a blunt voice; “Question.”

“Answer,” Pidge grunts softly. The door slides open and Keith is there holding an Altean tablet in one hand, glancing around the room casually as he steps over the threshold, careful of the small stack of pilfered and broken droids by the side of her desk. She’s dressed in faded grey sweatpants and a tank top in a shade of pink so neon it hurts to look directly at it. Her bangs are pushed back from her face by a hairband, while the rest of her hair is as much a barely controlled mess as her lab and frames her face like a fluffy lion’s mane.

“Can you reprogram this?”

“The fact that you’re asking me if I _can_ is insulting as hell- _of course I can_ ,” she snorts. “What do you need?”

“Digital art tablet,” he shrugs and brushes a few locks of his hair away from his face. His hair is slightly damp and has a slight wave to it; a side effect of letting it air dry.

She stares blankly for a moment, the light reflecting off her glasses as she looks up at the other Paladin and obscuring her eyes.

“What?”

“Didn’t peg you for the artistic type,” Pidge shrugs as she swipes the machine, setting it gracelessly in front of her as she tugs open a drawer on her desk. “What time is it now?”

“Almost time for breakfast, actually.”

“Ah shit. Ok, uh,” Pidge bites her lip, tapping her nails rapidly against her desk and rubbing at her eyes under her glasses, “bring me breakfast when it’s ready, just like some fruit and water or something if you can so that I don’t have to leave the lab, and I’ll see if I can’t have it finished by lunch. I promised Coran I’d do some troubleshooting in the Blue Lion’s hangar this afternoon so this’ll have to be a quick job.”

The Red Paladin gives her a nod as he turns around. “You’re the best, Pidge.”

“Don’t I know it…” she mumbles, already prying the side of the Altean tablet apart with two delicate little silver instruments. Her tongue pokes out the side of her mouth as she leans over the desk and tugs delicately on one wire with a pronged tool.

 

“I made a number of changes but the most important ones are thus;” Pidge announces, startling her fellow Paladin while he was in the middle of eating. He pounds his fist into his chest a few times as he coughs, blinking at her with a look that positively drips with disdain. The Green Paladin just hums happily and continues.

“The projected screen can be as much as doubled in size by pulling or pushing the corner, the stylus is pressure sensitive, and for a more _personalized_ touch,” she grins as she pulls the machine out from behind herself, “I replaced the standard blue trim lighting with red. It’s not a fancy tablet, more like a sketchbook with a badass battery life, but it should get the job done. Whatever the job may be. And of course I left the standard nav system in it just in case.”

“I’m not entirely convinced you’re not some kind of tech-witch, you know,” Keith chuckles as he takes the tablet from the smaller Paladin. His voice is just a little strained from his near-death experience choking on food goo.

“Hocus pocus,” she deadpans as she reaches over to click the machine on. “So you never explained; you’re an artist?”

“Hobbyist,” the Red Paladin shrugs as he twirls the red and white stylus pen gracefully in his fingers. “Mom always teased I’d take after her once I got bored with space, but we both knew _that_ would never happen. I was her little star-child…”

It takes him several seconds to realize what he said out loud and Pidge puts a gentle hand on his forearm as he takes a shuddering breath. His ears pin back as he exhales slowly, the apple of his throat bobbing as he swallows his pain and fights back the sudden onslaught of tears threatening to burst free. Pidge lets herself radiate a sense of sympathy, letting him feel through the contact.

“You don’t have to- to talk about it, if you don’t… It’s completely ok, you know.” She’s no Shiro. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, what he's been through, or how to help- in fact she knows she’s probably going to make it all worse at some point. That's one of the things she's always been good at.

She can feel the appreciation there beneath the burning pain as he sighs softly and rests his hand on hers. “After all this time, it still hurts. I still miss her. And dad. I miss them both so much… Shiro said it eventually gets easier, that you learn to shoulder it better, and someday it weighs a little less than it used to, but I don’t know sometimes…”

“Did you…?” She doesn’t know why she’s asking _now_ , of all times, but the question comes on its own. She doesn’t need to finish it out loud for him to feel what she was asking.

“Their favorite bed-time story when I was little was how they had the pick of all the babies in the world, any one at all, but none of them were the right one until one day… the only one they wanted was _me_ ,” he laughs faintly, tired eyes sparking with moisture as he stares at the wall. “I felt bad for all the kids whose parents didn’t get to pick them out. Still kinda do, actually…”

“We don’t need your pity,” Pidge teases, and Keith bumps her with his shoulder.

“Too bad, it’s going to be damn pity party in here.”

“I’ll the get balloons, you get the cake.”

He gives her a bemused if deeply skeptical look. “Why do I get the feeling that any balloons you’d ‘acquire’ would blow up in our faces?”

Pidge just mimes being mortally wounded.

 

The Blue Lion’s hangar is colder than it should be- one of many, many problems Pidge is making notes on as she runs through everything. She tucks herself a little deeper into her warm jacket and pulls the extra blanket tighter around herself as she scrolls through more data, glaring at the thin fog of her breath as it blocks her vision. She waves one hand to clear it and goes back to reading, switching between Altean and her translator on her tablet.

Pidge frowns at the display, chewing on her tongue as she leans closer. She does not like the look of what she’s seeing.  She opens a call screen to the Yellow Lion’s hangar where she knows Coran is working on some minor repairs- that hangar was supposedly the least damaged, but apparently connected to some very important parts, so he’s switched main priorities now that Pidge is back on board and helping with repairs. (And the Green Lion is in fighting shape- the primary motivator for his work in Red's hangar, where she's _still_ awaiting help. Her hangar seems to have gotten the worst of it, though this one isn't much better.)

“Coran, can you take a look at this?”

“What is it?” The Altean strides into view, adjusting his sleeves above his elbows as he walks.

“What does this look like to you?” She double-taps the display as he leans over to enlarge something on their respective screens, watching as his eyes widen.

“Ah, _quiznak_ …” He leans over to the comms and pushes one hand through his hair as he taps on the audio call button. “Princess, I’m afraid I have more bad news.”

Allura’s long-suffering sigh floats through the speaker. “What is it now Coran?”

“The Castle… The Castle appears to be losing water. Slowly, thankfully, but it appears we’ve been losing water for a while now, quite likely since before the last emergency jump.”

There’s a truly _vibrant_ string of words on the other end of the speaker that the Green Lion obstinately refuses to translate for her Paladin. Pidge doesn’t really need the exact meanings to understand, though; Allura’s tone really just says it all. And the expression on the older Altean’s face as his ears turn brilliantly pink and he buries his mortified face in one calloused hand is pretty helpful too. It’s _so nice_ to see Pidge isn’t the only one with a penchant for truly horrendous language.

It takes a good minute for the Princess to run out of curses. Pidge is quietly impressed by the uninterrupted and apparently unrepeated string- she’s not sure Allura even took a breath at any point during her little rant.

“I’ll start looking for a world we can resupply from,” the younger Altean groans once she has gotten all of her initial frustration out of her system. “Let me know if you need anything. When do you think you’ll have the leak patched up?”

“Hard to say, Princess. I’m not even sure where the leak is yet.”

Allura huffs. “ _Of course not_ …” Pidge senses another string of curses incoming, but the Princess ends the call before the Paladin can catch any of them. Coran sighs softly before he gives the Green Paladin a paternally stern look.

“Never repeat any of what she just said.”

Pidge snickers. “I won’t.”

She couldn’t if she tried, but she won’t either.

 

The Green Paladin breathes a shaky sigh of relief when her work in the Blue Lion’s hangar is done, and hurries back across the Castle, bouncing on the balls of her feet and shaking her numb hands out to warm them. She spots the back of Keith’s head from the couch in the living room and takes a slight detour on her way back to her room.

She leans over as she passes, looking at the sketch the Red Paladin is currently absorbed in. It’s an almost eerily lifelike sketch of Allura clearly inspired by yesterday, her hair falling freely and wildly around her as she practices with the staff she electrocuted the hell out of her Paladins with. Everything down to the tense muscles in her neck and arms as she focuses on her footwork is carefully captured on the page, and Pidge, being _Pidge_ , can’t resist a little teasing at her fellow Paladin’s expense.

“That is really good anime,” Pidge croons.

She could swear she sees a vein bulge out in Keith’s forehead. He growls softly and she just grins.

“It’s only because I know you’re doing that on purpose that I’m not trying to murder you right now.”

“Oh come on,” she teases, leaning further over the back of the couch, “I don’t see the problem here, I mean it is _really good anime_.”

He pushes her face away with one hand, an exasperated sigh echoing between them as she purrs brightly.

It’s so _nice_ to have someone to mess with again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who screamed when they rewatched Voltron season one today and saw Pidge use her left goddamn hand to stab the thing?
> 
> Guess. No really, guess.
> 
> I scared the cat napping in my lap half to death, so I expect she’ll do something horrible to me while I’m sleeping as payback. So I fucked up, the scar is on the wrong side. But I am committed or lazy, not sure which, so I don't think I'm going to edit and fix that.
> 
> From what we’ve been seeing so far of the deeper Paladin bond so far is that when they’re in contact they can pick up on each other’s emotional state and state of mind, they can feel how the other feels, understand a rough sense of what the other is thinking. That’s not the only side-effect here, but the rest of it is something we’re going to see later, and it’s going to hurt. I mean be fun. No I don’t.
> 
> Also, just for my own benefit, I have gone and named the mice Azuline (little blue one), Aubergine (pink one), Mazarine (blue-green with red eyes), and Celadon (big yellow-green one), because fuck they need names and those are all fancy color descriptors that kinda sorta fit. I'll incorporate them into this somehow.
> 
> Allura is a glorious hypocrite when it comes to swearing and if you disagree I suggest you meet me on the fucking deck~.
> 
> This is kind of a quiet chapter but we're setting the stage for something coming up honestly a lot sooner than I was expecting. I thought I had more space before then, but I do not. It's a little weird looking at some of the lines in this chapter and laughing because I know those lines aren't going to be funny for very long. I'm debating on how to write it, but I like the idea of delayed reveals and withholding the important parts until we have characters we can reveal them to so you get to find out at the same time. I'll figure it out.


	21. Shameless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She has no shame, even when she really should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like almost every time, again I say- holy crap I love you all so much, you all make my day, I hope you continue reading and enjoying this fic and I hope the coming chapters and storylines don't make you hate me *too much*. Then again you've put up with me this far, so who knows.
> 
> (Also, there are some frank and amusing (to me) discussions of menstruation happening in this chapter.)

Pidge pokes gently at her bowl, moving the thick green goo with half-hearted strokes as she zones out of the early morning conversation around her. Her hazy mind is still stubbornly stuck where she left off on a weird programing problem she just couldn’t worm her way around; some little command somewhere in a massive program must have been written wrong, causing a number of benign but inconvenient little bugs with the otherwise now repaired air conditioning unit in the Blue Lion’s bay, but she doesn’t even have the foggiest idea where to start looking for it. That it’s all written in an old Altean shorthand makes it no easier.

She yawns and leans her cheek into her hand, the casual prodding of her spoon slowing. She doesn’t notice the concerned glances the others begin shooting her around the table in the middle of their morning chatter. Another yawn, smaller, and her eyes slip closed. A veritable waterfall of Altean characters drift behind her eyes, taunting her exhausted brain with their secrets, and the rhythm of nigh illegible code is the last little push she needs…

Her head slips from her hand and falls into her breakfast with a flat splash. Flecks of green goo splatter the other three people at the table. A particularly large glob knocks a mouse off the table entirely.

There is a beat of dead silence, a deep and deeply exhausted sigh, and then a dry murmur.

“ _We are the universes’ only hope_ …”

Pidge weakly punches in the direction of the attitude, her fist connecting with what she assumes is Keith’s bicep as he snickers softly. A firm hand squeezes her left shoulder. She blearily notes the casual, almost confident level of contact; he’s much more comfortable with the changes he’s been through than he was a week ago if he’s willing to so easily put a hand on her again. Her chest flutters with a touch of sisterly pride.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

Pidge lifts her head from her surprisingly comfortable mess of a breakfast just enough so that her exhaustion-slurred words aren’t muffled. “You’re not my mom, you can’t tell me what to do.”

“I have to admit that would be quite the feat if he were,” Coran laughs, wiping at his face. “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to him, though.”

Pidge pulls herself all the way out of her bowl and gives him the best glare she can muster. The effect is dampened rather significantly by the thick green mess smeared over her face, dripping slowly off her skin and back into the dish it was originally in. The hand on her shoulder gives her a squeeze and she wipes at her face as she rounds her exhausted glower on her fellow Paladin, pouting when the most she can get out of him is a single eyebrow quirking upward in what she knows is his own personal brand of concern.

Keith concern.

Keithcern. TM.

She snorts and her whole body racks with sleep-deprived giggles as Keith rolls his eyes and helps her out of her chair. “Can you get me an extra coffee when I get back Coran? Thanks,” he says over his shoulder as he guides the still giggling teenager out of the dining hall, shaking his head the entire time.

They’re not even halfway down the hall when the Green Paladin decides she’s had _quite enough of everything_ for today.

“Carry me,” Pidge says, leaning her entire weight suddenly into Keith’s side. She can feel him rolling his eyes as he pushes her shoulders up back into a standing position.

“Your legs work just fine, Pidge.”

She drops into dead weight, shamelessly smug when he catches her instinctively.

“No they don’t.”

The Red Paladin’s long-suffering sigh is a clear sign of surrender, and although Pidge is too tired to celebrate out loud she does whoop a little in her head, purring brightly when Keith bends down and pulls her onto his back, hooking his arms under her knees. It usually takes way more effort on her part to get a piggy back ride out of Shiro or Hunk. _She’s going to exploit the hell out of this_.

“You’re a pain in my ass.” There’s no bite to his words. In fact he sounds almost amused.

“That’s my job,” she yawns, setting her chin on his shoulder and closing her eyes. “Little sisters are supposed to be a pain.”

“How I miss being an only child,” he huffs dryly as he stands and readjusts her legs.

“No refunds,” she mumbles quietly.

 

Time passes quickly on the Castle of Lions.

Pidge is almost caught off guard when her menses swings back around; but only almost. As lost in her focus as she can get she never gets caught off guard.

She burrows herself deep inside her warm blanket nest, peanut butter cookies to her left (she keeps very careful track of how many she eats- she wants to make them last) and an open and mostly devoured bag of jerky to her right, glancing up from her laptop when her bedroom door finally opens. One of the _many_ great things about Lions, she has learned, is that they can function like a game of Telephone; Pidge pesters Green, who in turn pesters Red, who in turn pesters Keith into getting up and getting shit for the Green Paladin who refuses to get up and get it herself.

“Is it really _that_ bad?” Keith questions, sitting down on the edge of Pidge’s bed with her coffee and painkillers- she refused to get out of bed to get them, she’d left them in the lab last night- and would likely spend all of today in bed if she could. But she has repairs to do so she’ll have to be out once the painkillers kick in. She narrows her eyes and one small hand darts out from under the blanket to grab him as another sharp cramp twists low in her belly, smiling dangerously when his face pales. “ _Nevermind_.”

“Like chainsaws in my ovaries,” she sighs, popping the cap off the bottle with ease. “And they can get worse than this. It’s the fucking French Revolution in my pants. Pretty sure I can feel them decapitating Marie Antoinette right now.”

He looks almost comically mortified. “You sure you don’t want the day off?”

She laughs. “The concern is touching, but I’ll be fine. I’m not _dying_.”

Keith shakes his head and moves to stand- “Oh, right, I had a question.”

“And I probably have an answer,” Pidge announces through a mouthful of painkillers, taking the mug of warm coffee with both hands and chugging. “Whazzit?”

“Have you ever had…” he gestures vaguely with his hands, “memory dreams?”

Pidge tilts her head.

“Like, dreams that are clearly memories- and not your own memories.”

Pidge nods, resting her cup in her lap with one hand. “I saw a planet die once.”

“Iilaria?”

So he saw it too.

“Yeah,” she curls her legs closer, making sure to hold the dozing Green Lion far away from that thought. “I was seeing something Green saw. She was really tired, and when she fell into a deep sleep while I was sleeping I saw what she was dreaming of. Red must be beyond exhausted if you’re getting those.”

Keith nods. “She is. Has been for a while. But now that her sunlamps are working she’s feeling better, should be good to go after a few more days of rest, so thanks for that.”

“You helped.” He mostly just handed Pidge and Coran tools when asked, reminded them to take breaks and occasionally got them water, but they found it very helpful all the same.

He shrugs. “Anyway, I saw something else, but I wasn’t sure what it was.” The Red Paladin chews thoughtfully on his cheek. “Allura said we can share feelings, and thoughts right? If it’s strong enough?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me your hand?”

Pidge gives him her free hand, laughing when another stabbing cramp catches him off guard. He sighs and closes his eyes, drawing on the memory of the dream. Distant shouting echoes off of metal walls, and Pidge can faintly recognize one of the voices as they grow clearer in her head. The visuals are hazy and silver, tiny figures far below near giant red paws the source of the arguing.

Even if he can’t remember the images that well, the audio is crystal clear.

“ _You cannot do this_!”

“ _You cannot stop me_!”

“ _Do you know what it could do to you?_ ”

“ _If I am to be Queen_ -”

“ _It is not your responsibility_!”

“ _I am the only Altean who can. I will not wait, I will not shift this burden to one who is not yet born. This is my responsibility. I owe it to you, and to everyone, to try. I cannot ask him, I cannot ask everyone to forfeit-_ ”

“ _And what if you die? What if it kills you- what then, Eris?_ ”

“ _I ignore the faithlessness of your words, but even if they are true then I will have died an honorable death, Anduel. You know this. We all know this_.  _Even your soon-to-be leader understands this_.”

“ _You brought it to him first_?”

“ _I trust his judgement, cousin, the way I wish you would trust mine_.”

Pidge blinks rapidly as the moment fades, furrowing her brows as she cradles her mug near her face in both hands.

“I don’t recognize the woman’s voice.”

“I was going to ask Allura,” Keith sighs, running one hand through his hair, “but Red asked me not to. She insisted. I know the man was her last Paladin, I managed to get _that much_ out of her, but she refuses to tell me anything else.”

The Green Paladin shrugs in understanding. “I’d say the Lions have their reasons, but I’m not exactly a fan of the secrets either.” Says the girl keeping a laundry list of her own secrets, and the secrets of others.

Keith nods, straightening out his pants as he stands back up. “Thanks anyway. Feel better soon, Pidge.”

She grunts, stuffing another cookie in her mouth.

 

Weeks of work in the evenings after her repair duties were satisfied, sleep in such sparse intervals she’d already long-forgotten what it was like to be well rested, and finally… finally, _finally_ Pidge has the answers she didn’t even know she needed.

Sendak’s memories, what few she has, are a fucking trove. And cross-referenced with the data she has from his ship (but still it’s not enough, it seems like it’s never enough) she has a world of potential at her fingertips.

A world of danger too, perhaps; he was not willing to let the data come so easily, and it’s possible he let only half of the equation through, leaving aspects out, but Pidge _doesn’t care_. That’s a problem to be dealt with later, a bridge to cross when she comes to it. And that’s not even accounting for all the damaged and corrupted data, which is _most_ of what she’s mined from numerous sources over the past months in sporadic bursts. Far too many documents cut off in the middle, far too many sentences sit incomplete.

But now she has some answers. She has a map, a plan.

Mostly.

She shifts her glasses on top of her head.

“Do you guys know anything about a place called Sraxus Beta?”

Pidge is curled up on the far end of the couch, reading like her life depends on it, while Keith and Allura sit together and the Altean braids his hair in an intricate but practical style behind his head. Coran is in the space between them and Pidge and drinking a little nunvill quietly, unwinding after a long week of getting the ship back in order. There’s so much work still left to be done, but even he has to take an hour for himself every so often- he even chose the music playing softly in the background, something from Altea during the happier years. It’s a warm melody laced through with soft singing, the lyrics indistinct but pleasant as Pidge tunes them out to think.

“Of course,” Coran nods, taking a quick sip from his mug. “It’s a planetary trading post, established roughly twenty-five thousand years ago on an uninhabited temperate world. One of very few uninhabited temperate worlds, actually, so the local population is a wide collection of peoples from all over the universe. The people who live there permanently mostly trade in locally grown or harvested resources, like fine spices and luxury metals. The Sraxus septuple were all trading post planets near major interstellar routes.”

 ** _Ah yes, the living encyclopedia knows all._** Pidge tries not to laugh as Green rumbles in her head, shooing the bemused Lion out of her brain half-heartedly. She keeps her mental fidgets far away from her Lion, hiding things that the great beast is too content to notice.

“Apparently it’s one of the possible sites for what sound like some pretty serious rebellion movements, if the data we’ve been piecing together is anything to go off of.”

Allura and Coran exchange interested expressions. She can’t see his face but she can see Keith’s ears perk up at her statement.

“We’ll have to give it a look then. Not yet, but soon,” the Princess smiles. “We might find ourselves among allies.”

“Have we found somewhere to get water yet?” Keith asks, one crossed leg bouncing restlessly as Allura returns to her braiding. When he hasn’t been helping Pidge and Coran during repairs or running himself into the ground with training practice he’s been providing the Princess with moral support and a voice of reason, even when it’s clear he wants to forego sleep just as much as she does to find the other Lions. Pidge can’t help but notice he’s trying very hard to be like Shiro.

“Possibly,” Allura sighs. “We’re currently on the very fringes of mapped space. For better or for worse, nobody is likely to find us out here, so when we stop we’ll likely be safe, but I want to be absolutely sure. I don’t want to take any chances. I have a list of nearby uninhabited celestial bodies with ice or water we could… _borrow_.” She glances over her shoulder at Pidge. “I want you to review them tonight, cross-reference with your data. Just to be absolutely safe.”

The Green Paladin nods.

 

The Green Paladin lies.

“This one.”

She pulls the projected map toward herself and points to one of the pre-marked planets- an unnamed and tiny thing, mostly tropical, peppered with grand freshwater lakes that reach the size of small seas over the entire surface. Four lumpy little moons provide the body with protection from any interstellar debris. It’s a strange little world, no history of local sentient life, no history of settlements, and it’s one Allura had only considered at all because of its proximity to their current location. If it hadn’t been nearby, she would have never allowed it.

Pidge points out her choice, the one she promises is the right decision. She can’t miss this opportunity. Not knowing what she knows. She knows the moons protect secrets undetectable from the air.

She knows this planet has a name, one young and fresh.

Serva Nine.

A Galra name.

She was on Serva Two once, a chilly little moon she and the other Paladins had all affectionately referred to as ‘Endor’ until they were told that the word was a very dirty swear in Trade that they should never repeat in polite company. Or at all. She knows the Serva series.

Or, she thinks she does. The Serva series are research stations on far-flung outposts, perpetually understaffed, easily crackable, and this one, Nine, is completely empty. Sendak was _there_ when they abandoned the place almost a year ago. Something about the resources they were expending in the local research not being worth the returns they were getting. But she’ll be getting everything- for the first time, there will be _nothing_ keeping her from siphoning off every last little drop of information. Every single time she’s tried to gather data something has interrupted her, cut her off before she's even reached the halfway point- she’s not willing to say it’s her curse yet, but she’s certainly not liking the numbers either.

She looks Allura in the eye and she tells the Princess that _this_ is the planet of her choosing. This is the one she thinks would be safest. The stars have aligned for her and she is not missing this opportunity for anything. She can’t know Allura would go along with this and she won’t risk it. Besides, nobody will ever know. She'll be done before they notice she ever left the Castle.

So Pidge lies.

She looks her friend, her leader, her sister in the eye, and she lies. She exploits Allura’s trust in her. She exploits the trust of the woman who only two nights ago welcomed Pidge into her bed after a nightmare and sang old lullabies for her Paladin until she had dozed off again.

Pidge lies.

And she feels no shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really should learn to clarify things more- when I say something’s coming up faster than I expected, I mean in like the next two or three chapters, generally; not usually right away. 
> 
> For Pidge and for Keith I think some of their biggest flaws are that they can just get overconfident, and they’re just so independent, and that’s something they’re about to get a handle on whether they want to or not. Especially Pidge, because I think Keith after that whole ‘nearly dying at Zarkon’s hand’ deal has learned to be a little less headstrong and independent. Little bit. Tiny little bit. Not that much though, as we're about to find out. They really need to stop being so independent.
> 
> My song choices for when I write can get weird. Like, Trouble by Neon Jungle is one I use to get into writing Pidge and I think it suits her extremely well, but for this chapter mostly I just had LGBT by Cupcakke on loop; that and Fuck You by Lily Allen. No rhyme or reason to it, those were just the songs I had on in the background to help my brain do its thing. They do not fit the tone of the story but they are fun to listen to. Trouble, though, is kind of appropriate for the next chapter.
> 
> (I first heard Trouble in the movie The Shallows, and it’s a fantastic movie, you should totally watch it if you can. Little bit narmy in places, super bloody, some weird butt or boob focused shots in the beginning that make no sense, but otherwise it’s all really fun to watch.)
> 
> The ability to make someone feel your invisible pain would just be awesome though. Especially with cramps and migraines. Sometimes you just need someone else to suffer with you.
> 
> I was tempted to cut the Eris and Anduel bit, but I wasn’t sure where else to have it, and this is a short chapter, so there we go there's my excuse. In hindsight I wish I had made the two of them siblings rather than first cousins, but it's a bit late for that now.
> 
> Also we are currently five and a half or six weeks post-wormhole in case that was not clear already. I need to write this shit down somewhere because I cannot keep track of dates for the life of me.
> 
> And in the next chapter we finally find out about the location of one of the missing Lions, yay.
> 
> I feel like this entire story can be described as 'Pidge makes mistakes, shit goes wrong, also family bonding'.
> 
> More lines in this chapter that are just not going to be that funny later. Not just after what happens next, but down the road too.
> 
> I’ve got some lighter stuff lined up for later, and I’m working on a ‘deleted scene’ sort of chapter that is almost more of a one-shot that I’m sure a lot of us will enjoy. It will be posted separate from this fic when it’s done in case you’re not interested in reading it, and I will let you all know when it goes up. I'll probably title it like 'Laced With Starlight' or something, and it will be Shiro/Allura, and it will get explicit.


	22. Flesh and Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Origins of Voltron, page 12, line 17:
> 
> Paladins are Avatars to the Elements, manifestations of the very quintessence of the cosmos, but they are still flesh and bone. They are the children of gods, the chosen of Lions, but they still bleed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the more I consider what I’ve written and will continue to write the more I think my general characterization of Pidge can be summarized thusly:
> 
> Everyone: Pidge no  
> Pidge: PIDGE FUCK YES
> 
> Is that accurate? It feels accurate. 
> 
> Oh and I saw the season 2 trailer the other day and that moment where Pidge is making fun of the others I was laughing so hard but at the same time that “my name’s Keith, I’m sooo emo” line made me go “Pidge stop making fun of your brother” like any of this is actually canon. Somehow I doubt any of the Paladins will actually refer to each other as siblings in the show even if/when they develop a strong familial bond. This is so far removed from canon that it's basically nikon.
> 
> Little too much time in my own head I think.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy part one of two.

At first everything is fine, normal, according to plan. Pidge winds herself up for the window she has- six hours, hopefully just enough for what she needs. Normally she would only have three or four, depending on when she manages to take off, but she’s been in the habit of skipping lunch lately so her lack of presence at the table today should safely go unnoticed if her work goes long. It’s really only her routine training with Allura again this afternoon that guarantees she’ll be needed back inside before sundown and before the Castle can finish filtering the new water supply tonight.

They touch-down planetside just before breakfast, everyone nervous with excitement to get this critical chore out of the way, overlooking a beautiful lagoon and tropical forest so lush the entire horizon is shades of green rising to an aquamarine sky. The Princess has everyone go off to eat without her, promising she’ll be there shortly.

Allura makes an announcement at breakfast that sucks the air right out of the room. She claps her hands and laces her fingers together with a tense smile when she takes her position at the head of the table.

“I’ve located the Black Lion.”

There’s definitely supposed to be a ‘but’ there. Her tone clearly indicates the presence of an unspoken ‘but’ at the end of her sentence. That is a sentence uncomfortably and obviously unfinished. Keith is the one to finish it for her. “ _But?_ ”

“There’s good news and there’s… bad news,” she sighs, settling in her chair and pushing her cup toward her plate slowly. She edges a small bowl of diced blue and green fruits toward the patiently waiting mice on the table. The one with silky pink fur chirps in appreciation.

Keith and Pidge glance between each other. “Good news first.”

“The signal is coming from a part of space with no apparent Galra presence.”

That sounds really good.

“And the bad news?”

“The signal is coming from a part of space so far removed from any known starmaps that it’s completely uncharted, and the deep space scanners only give us the vaguest of pictures. We’ll be going in almost blind.”

That could be _really_ bad.

“Good news again though,” Coran interrupts brightly, “the wormhole generator is nearly fixed, so we’ll be there in a tick and a half. Good thing too, since it’s all the way on the other side of the map.”

“How fixed?” Pidge bites her lip, unusually tense for such good news. One of the mice perks up at her tone but keeps nibbling on the little cube of speckled blue and white fruit in its paws.

Coran tugs his mustache for a moment as he runs his mental calculations. “Should be done by lunch time.”

“Awesome,” she nods, her voice strained, her smile tense. She pushes her hands down on the table and rises to her feet, breakfast barely touched. “Well, I’m still feeling a little worn out from the past couple of days, so I’m going to go lay down.”

“Let us know if you need anything,” Coran calls to her quickly retreating form. Pidge waves dismissively as she hurries out the door.

 

Her mental wall slipped up the moment she heard they’d found Shiro, and Green had jolted violently in the Paladin’s head when she realized there had been a wall at all.

“I’m sorry, ok, I’m _sorry_ ,” Pidge hisses, double-checking she has everything she needs in her pockets. She pats her hips again to make sure she feels the cold steel lump she needs, kicking around the mess on the floor of her lab in case she dropped something. She cringes when a mangled round droid splits apart like a coconut. “I shouldn’t have kept this from you, I know, I’m sorry.”

**_You can tell me anything. I am here for you. I am here to help. Do NOT deceive me._ **

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” The Green Paladin thumps her head against the wall a few times under her Lion’s mental glower. It isn’t even the anger her Lion is sharing so much as it is her disappointment _, her feeling of betrayal_ , and that stings so much worse. “I’ll never do that again, I promise.”

**_I know. And I know you would go whether or not you went with me. It is better that we go together._ **

“They’ll notice you’re not in your bay. I can’t risk that.”

**_Then come to me, take energy. Your plan is not likely to work._**

Ignoring the fact that the Green Lion just furiously dug through Pidge’s mind to learn the details of her plan… “Take…?”

**_Trust me. Please._**

Pidge swallows the lump in her throat and nods before reaching for her bag on her desk.

The biggest reason for what she’s doing is that she knows Serva outposts are basically overflowing data-mines, at least for what she needs. Current research projects, research progress, weapons and shields and ships blueprints, data on all encountered species, prisoner logs if any have come through the area, current stats on the major players in the Galra empire; the list goes on.

 _And that’s only what she knows for certain_. She only got _maybe_ ten percent of the data on Serva Two before the team was forced to blow the entire station higher than a Calypsian kite, and while she knew it was necessary in the moment it haunted her for nights afterwards. So much was lost, so much that could have helped her, so much that might have helped her family, so much that could have helped everyone… Hunk had consoled her, promised her there'd be a next time, and she laughs faintly as she considers that he was, as he always is, right.

She’s going to get _everything_ from Serva Nine. She’s not missing this opportunity for anything.

She can’t.

She won’t.

 

Green is sitting with her tail curled delicately (or as delicately as a robotic feline larger than an airplane hangar can manage) over her front paws, and when Pidge enters the hangar her great mechanical head turns to watch her Paladin. She calls the girl to stand before her paws, tilting her head as she watches Pidge cross the distance with slumped shoulders and a shy, lopsided smile.

The Green Lion bows her great head forward with a gentle rumble, the sound thrumming through the Paladin and echoing like distant thunder in the Lion’s bay.

**_Palms to me._ **

Pidge obeys the Lion, adopting the pose Green is showing her behind her eyes. She feels something like the distant cresting of a wave approaching the shore, the threat of power building with every second, until suddenly an almost blinding neon green light engulfs her inside and out. She’s very nearly knocked off her feet entirely but she manages to remain upright, holding her breath through the crushing energy pouring into every cell in her body and pushing her senses past their limits.

Wave isn't right, water is hardly the right comparison, and as brilliant as it is it doesn’t burn or flash like fire either.

It snakes through her blood like vines, curling over her bones, winding deep through her muscles, blooming and flourishing in her grey matter- as unreal as it is it’s the unmistakable feeling of _Forest_ curling deep inside her and twisting its roots deep into the core and the marrow of her being. It’s a familiar sensation in the same moment that it is alien, a deafening magnification of the energy that has always been inside of her, and an overflowing of the energy that she has always felt from her Lion since the moment they met in an alien jungle she imagines is not so different from this one.

 ** _There._** Green announces as the overflow cuts out and leaves the teenager reeling, sliding her back end across the cool metal floors until she is laying with her head on her paws. Her golden eyes towering far above even at this height lock onto the small figure of her chosen Paladin. **_I lent quintessence. You will have all the energy and more you need to complete your task, and quickly. But take care_** , the Lion warns, ** _if we are needed to fight in the next days, we will be drawing heavily from you. More than we should. Save what you can. It will be some time before I am recuperated._**

Something like a rough mental tongue runs over the Green Paladin’s mind, doting and smothering in the same gesture as it sweeps over her senses and her muscles slack in contentment.

**_I expect you back soon, cub._ **

Pidge smiles weakly up at the giant machine; at least Green isn’t _that_ angry with her.

 

She is really getting tired of being wrong.

Keith catches her sneaking down through the hallways rarely used and she curses in a panic- she _knew_ she should have taken the vents, paranoid though the idea seemed at the time.

“Red said you’d be here.” He seems deeply confused by the statement.

“ _Motherfucker_ ,” Pidge snarls at her Lion. She can feel the Green Lion’s mental hackles rise back in challenge, tense and just daring her to contradict as she growls back low in her brain. So much for Green not being pissed at her.

 _This is what she gets for deceiving her Lion_.

The Lion… of stealth and deception.

Isn’t that some shit.

“This is an oddly familiar scene. What are you up to _now_ , Pidge?”

“Nothin,” she huffs, cracking out her neck and readjusting her bag on her shoulder.

“Sneaking around in full Paladin armor with a bag full of who-knows-what is just for _nothing_? Really?” He folds his arms over his chest and raises one eyebrow. Her stomach flips when she swears she sees a mirror of Shiro in his posture and she’s not sure if it’s intentional on his part or not. It’s really a bit of an either/or situation right now. “Do you think I was born yesterday?”

“I could hope,” she grumbles as she refuses to meet his gaze.

“Pidge, whatever it is you’re planning,” Keith sighs, pinching his nose between two fingers. The Green Paladin notes with delighted fascination as thin wisps of smoke escape the sides of his mouth as he does so- well _that_ promises to be an interesting development. He shakes his head and glances up toward the ceiling. “I can’t let you go alone.”

It takes her a moment to register the meaning. “But I can still go?”

“As long as I go with you.”

Oh yeah, there’s that Shiro in him. She squares herself brightly.

“You’ve got ten minutes while I hook up a cloak to one of the podships downstairs; your ass had better be in the cockpit by the time I’m done or I'll leave without you.”

“Make it fifteen.”

She narrows her eyes. “Twelve. I want to do this quickly.”

He’s at the bay in six.

He chucks his helmet into the cockpit over the open side of the ship casually, grabbing his hair in one hand as he unfurls a hair tie from around his other hand, only to bite his lip to keep from laughing when an unseen Pidge makes a very loud and distinctly goose-like honking noise in surprise.

“Jackass!” she shouts. He puts his hair up before he climbs up over the side and looks in where Pidge is still half-tucked underneath the control panel, furiously kicking away the red and white helmet with one foot. She doesn’t come out but she does point the toes of one foot in his direction in an oddly accusing way. “The fuck was that?”

“You said ten minutes,” the Red Paladin rolls his eyes. He knows she was never going to stick around for the compromise time. She wasn't even going to stick around for the full ten minutes if she was done before then. “I’m here in less.”

“Fuck you,” she grumbles, giving his helmet one last kick. It bounces off the wall and clatters back to hit her in the shin as the Red Paladin only shakes his head. She hisses venomously, pulling her leg up to rub her tender shin with one hand.

“Love you too Pidge,” he snorts as he climbs into the ship. “I call-”

“Hell no, _I’m_ flying, eat my shit,” Pidge snarls from the floor, foot pointed threateningly in his general direction.

Keith puts his arms up in surrender, steps over the Paladin on the floor and settles into the right seat, putting his feet up on the dashboard. She finishes her installation a good minute or so later, after a lot of quiet cursing and at one point murmuring in what the Red Paladin will swear until his dying day was _binary_ , and she tosses her toolbox gracelessly into the back of the ship with no concern for the noise and the mess it makes.

“So what are you doing, exactly? What's the plan today?”

“Data mining,” the Green Paladin chirps as she wiggles herself happily into the pilot’s seat. She glances over conspiratorially, a dangerous and distinctly feline grin spreading over her face. “This planet is a Serva outpost.”

Keith’s jaw drops a little. “A Serva-”

“An _abandoned_ Serva outpost,” she amends before he can think to stop her, cracking her neck and flicking on the engines. “Has been for a while. Basically the information version of a free cake buffet and all you have to do is bring your own fork.”

The cloak works exactly as she had hoped and she makes a giddy squeaking sound as she maneuvers the now invisible ship toward the doors- she taps blindly at a screen she brings up on the forearm of her bracer, giving herself what she admits is a very narrow window to fly through that won’t be registered by the Castle’s logs. One of her rush projects over the past few days was a device she hooked into the hangar last night, designed to give her an override when she feels so inclined so that she can fly without anyone hearing that she left. She also stuck one in Green’s bay, just in case.

“Though I mean you _could_ use your hands, but what kind of barbarian…”

She reminds herself to let Keith know she has an extra later in case he wants to fly Red without catching attention, as a thank you for letting her get away with damn near anything.

There’s an admittedly understandable nervousness to his voice; “You _sure_ you don’t want me to-”

“Look, _prodigy pilot_ ,” Pidge laughs, rolling her shoulders and shoving the controls forward with enough force that the Red Paladin is thrown back in his seat, turning the ship almost completely on its side as she guns for the doors, “I’m not Lance, we’re not going to lose a fucking wing here.”

She does scrape the left wing on exit, though.

 _JUST A LITTLE BIT_ …

The stare Keith gives her is cold enough to freeze the sun twice over.

“You can fly us back?” she grins awkwardly.

He sinks back in the seat, the stare thawing slightly. “I’m holding you to that.”

The Green Paladin bites her cheeks to suppress her smile when she notices the way his gloved claws have sunk into the armrests and are now maybe just a _little_ stuck in the material if the subtle tugging of his hands is any indication. She raises one hand lazily.

“I promise. Scouts’ honor.”

He snorts, a few loose strands of hair falling free as he rolls his eyes. “Since when do you have honor?”

She laughs and wraps her hand back over the control.

“ _Touche_ … I was also never a scout.”

 

The planet is beautiful. Pidge is pretty sure that observation is completely objective and not at all related to her weird plant powers or bond with the Lion of Forest, because when she settles the podship down in a small clearing a half a click off from the station (the whole place is overgrown with vegetation, the runway is long gone, thankfully she took that into account in her initial plan, part of the reason she set aside so much time) she feels the kind of contentment she used to only ever feel with her fingers on a keyboard. The flora comes in every shade of the rainbow and curls free and feral over every inch of the terrain.

That strange space between her and her Lion informs her that those lilac colored vines are coated with powerful digestive enzymes, part of a carnivorous species of local plant that feeds on insects that get stuck on its sticky curling spoon-like leaves. The thick ferns by her feet with red speckles on ivory leaves are poisonous to ingest as well as a potent hallucinogen, and the towering trees with fat blue-green canopies of leaves in the sky are flowering now, and soon they will bear the sweetest, juiciest fruits on the entire planet. She keeps this knowledge to herself, however. It's a little strange to know all these things instinctively.

Pidge strides through the overgrown plants now curling and bending to make a narrow path before her, the plants that obey the energy of the Green Paladin (or of her Lion?) without hesitation. She’s always had an easier time in the underbrush than the other Paladins, always found footholds and trails easier in the forest, but this is new. She likes this. “Remember what Allura did with the Balmera?”

“Yeah. How’s that…?” Keith sticks close to the Green Paladin as they pick their way through the jungle; the plants move for her, but they don’t stay that way for long, so while they cover her tracks they make it hard for him to keep up without tripping over either her or the foliage.

“Green gave me a big dose of extra quintessence, since apparently we can share. We can add that to the list of new weird Paladin things we can do now. I’m going to use it to power the downloader since we don’t have Shiro’s arm around, and it will work way better than my initial plan of just electrocuting the hell out of it with my bayard for a couple hours. I can even use the big computer this way instead of going for one of the little back servers.”

They pause. A shared thought tugs at their heartstrings and their minds are clouded by the storm-grey eyes of a missing brother. The Red Paladin gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze in understanding. She pats his hand lightly.

“Let’s just get this over with,” she sighs and shakes her head, trudging forward over the green and gold moss covered roots. “In and out before anyone even notices we’re gone and maybe we'll be back in time for lunch. If they _never_ find out about this it will be too soon. I'd hate to hear what Allura would say.”

 

“Well _fuck me sideways_ ,” Keith huffs as the Galra base comes into view over the low hill. Pidge wheezes and almost stumbles into a tree, catching herself at the last second as she glances back at her fellow Paladin, snickering violently.

She certainly understands the sentiment, if nothing else. The research station is, for lack of a better term, a complete and total fucking disaster. Huge swaths of the outside are overgrown with feral alien vegetation, including a number of brightly-colored plants she instinctively recognizes as varying degrees of toxic, and the front entrance is a crumbling nightmare of steel and rubble.

“ _Please_ tell me there’s a back door somewhere.”

She doesn’t go for low hanging fruit and lets any quip she might make slide.

“Nah. Thing about this place is that it’s one way in, one way out,” she sighs and props her hands on her hips, looking over the crumbling mess. She toes gently at a few crumbled rocks and bolts with one foot. “So this is it. It’s actually a good thing you tagged along because I was not expecting this.”

The Red Paladin gives her a skeptical look.

“I got no muscle,” Pidge sighs, flexing one of her thin arms for emphasis, “and I gotta get that door open.”

Keith smiles wryly, rolling his eyes. “I feel so _used_.”

“Like a tampon.”

He grimaces in horror.

“Oh come on,” Pidge huffs as she makes her way over to the rubble. She can’t help but think of the way her brother Matt would always choke and laugh when one of them made a terrible quip like that. “It’s funny, I’m funny. Would you have preferred I said tissue?”

“That’s gross.”

“Now I’m doubling-down; it’s _hilarious_.” She glances over the wreckage with folded arms and pursed lips, tapping her foot slowly. She calls over her shoulder as she hears him step through the waving silver and blue crotch-high grass after her. “Lance would think I’m funny.”

She doesn’t need to look behind her to know Keith’s expression is a special breed of incredulous. “Are you feverish?”

“I can miss him,” she shrugs without looking away from the debris. “He’s annoying but he’s our friend. I know you miss him too.”

The Red Paladin doesn’t grace her with a response and instead starts sifting through the rubble. They take a few minutes to slowly push aside crushed steel and something like indigo concrete until Keith calls out in surprise- a long steel beam, bent at one end and weighed heavily down on the other end where it’s bolted into a large chunk of concrete rubble. It takes some careful maneuvering on their parts to get it to the top of the crumbling hill but they manage it, to use it to pry the half-blocked main door open and wedge it firmly in place to keep it open.

Pidge tilts her head and peers into the pitch darkness slowly until she spots an opening.

“Wish me luck,” she chirps brightly, lunging forward.

He catches her arm as she moves for the opening. He doesn’t need to open his mouth for the Green Paladin to feel his concern, the desire to go with her. Even though it's nothing new, being the baby sister of the team never seems to get less frustrating.

“Look, ignoring the fact that I don’t think you can even fit in there, all I need is this,” Pidge nods as she pulls out a small half-sphere from the pocket over her left hip. A few loose neon orange and pink wires on the flat size wiggle as she waves it around, and though the tech is personalized it’s clearly refurbished from old Galra parts. “Sendak’s memories show this place has been abandoned for nearly a year now. Most I’m going to find in there is some mold and maybe some skeletons or something. Chill dude, I got this.”

“What if it’s some kind of trap?”

“The odds of that are next to none, who would even set this up, but so what if it is? It’s not a trap if you know about it,” she shrugs as she stuffs the device back in her pocket. “It’s a challenge. _You_ of all people should know that.”

Fair enough, that is one of his personal mottos, but… “Red doesn’t like this.”

Pidge stills.

That’s Keith-speak for, ‘ _my instincts are going haywire_ ’. And she knows that Lions, especially Red, should be trusted anyway. If his Lion is getting nervous all the way from the Castle…

She sighs. “Look, if I’m not back in thirty minutes you can drag me kicking and screaming from whatever mess I got myself into, ok? You have my explicit permission to throw me over your shoulder if you have to. And I’ll check in every five minutes, too, if that helps.”

He folds his arms as he sits back on top of the rubble hill, nodding. Pidge gives him a half-assed salute as she turns on the lights of her helmet and wriggles her way through the door and crawls down on her elbows into the darkness beyond.

“Oh, one thing,” she calls from inside the ruins. The soles of her boots are just barely visible in the darkness. “Don't touch the white ivy with the star-shaped leaves. They're coated with a pretty potent toxin; if it gets on your skin you'll get a nasty blistering rash, and maybe some chemical burns if you touch enough of it.”

The Red Paladin flinches away from a nearby hanging vine, swatting away the innocently dangling plant and scooting across the hill of rubble.

A distant giggle echoes out from inside the debris.

 

“Keith, you there?”

His voice tumbles out in a rush. “Yeah Pidge, what is it?”

“Just checking in,” she huffs, picking her way over the tangled mess of roots slowly. The larger ones twist out of her way as she steps over them. “There’s nothing in here but some vines that don’t understand the concept of a personal bubble,” she sighs, violently swatting away the hanging foliage drawn to her energy. “Some dead little animals, all bone now, and lots of moss and mold. Some insects, too, I think. It’ll take me a few minutes to find the central data hub but it looks like everyone bailed in a hurry, so hopefully they didn’t purge it all when they left. Worst case scenario this was just a scenic bonding trip.”

“I can still-”

“Look, I appreciate all the concern and the love here,” she interrupts, ducking lower under a mostly-caved in section of ceiling and wriggling through the narrow gap carefully, her breastplate scraping loudly against the wall, “but this is a tight squeeze _for me_ and I would like to get in and out of this creepy station _as fast as possible_. Just hold your horses. Or your… yelmoors, or whatever.”

He sighs, long and low, and the frustrated sound echoes in her head in a way she finds oddly familiar. “You are incredibly stubborn, you know that?”

The layout appears to be roughly identical to Serva Two, at least so far, so she figures she’s got another two minutes or so until she finds what she’s looking for. She'd memorized what she knew of the layout ahead of time just to be careful.

(Shiro had carried her out like a football when the other three Paladins had announced things were going south on their end and they were detonating the charges ahead of schedule.)

(She's still a little bitter about that. Her legs worked just fine.)

“It’s a point of pride.”

 

“I found the room, I think I found the central data hub,” Pidge exhales and wipes at the heavy beads of condensation clinging to the glass of her visor. She casts her light around the room as she moves deeper and wills the vines over the largest panel aside, grinning when she recognizes the setup. “Yeah, yeah I found it.”

There's a subtle undercurrent of tension on the other end of the line. “Awesome. How long should it take you?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes? Maybe less, but I think Green said twenty at the most. Took longer to find this place than I thought. I’ll still check in at the next five-minute mark if you want.” She didn't say out loud, per say, but it was the feeling the Lion had shared, and that's as good as words as far as she's concerned.

“Please do, Pidge.” She imagines Keith's arms are folded and he's nodding as he speaks, and she nods quietly back without thinking.

The connection cuts back out into silence as Pidge centers herself in the darkness.

She’s going mostly off of what she’s read in the past, and what Green has told her, so she’s not totally sure what she’s doing, but she’s got a pretty good idea.

She hooks the wires of her machine in and pushes the flat side into the panel until she hears everything click into place- they really need to update and diversify their designs if she can craft something for a different part of the machine and still get the same results.

She reaches inward, closing her eyes and breathing as slowly as she can, feeling around for the light that Green had described. The coiling, radioactive warmth comes to her and she pulls it out from low in her gut, from below her navel, currying it slowly up in her spine, through her shoulders, over the tendons in her arms, down through the bones of her forearms, and finally out through the meat of her palms and the pads of her fingers. It winds and weaves through the path like firm, young branches, pushing and prodding out of her body to unfurl in the darkness.

A white-hot flare burns in front of her closed eyes and she cringes away, still keeping her hands firmly against the device as she breathes out the energy in rhythmic pulses. The light slowly fades into a warm, familiar green, brilliant in the dark and from behind her eyelids.

She loses herself in the energy, the sensation of letting it all out, pulling deeper from herself and pushing it into her device until she realizes her feet are going numb- and she tears herself away with a mortified gasp.

It takes several dizzy seconds for the white spots in her vision to fade and she glances up in confusion, sitting in a lumpy net of vines that caught her when she stumbled.

The download countdown on the screen gives her ten minutes, or the Galra equivalent, and the percentage gathered is rising much faster than she’d expected. She opens the screen on her bracer to check that it’s all connected to her armor before nodding.

She exhales a soft sigh of relief and massages the feeling back into her hands slowly, a painful pins and needles sensation prickling under her skin. She _suspects_ she may have over-extended herself a little. She gets the feeling she somehow used up not only all of the energy Green loaned to her, but a lot of her own. She might have to get Keith to carry her on his back when she gets out of here, because the sensation is thrumming in her feet and calves too. Her toes are numb and tingle painfully when she flexes them in her boots.

It was supposed to be a twenty-minute download, and that was accounting for the twenty seconds it took for her virus to break through the firewalls that honestly wouldn’t even pass muster in a little old lady’s laptop back home.

She credits this to her Lion, but she still definitely expelled some (a lot) of her own quintessence in that push.

She tugs her helmet from her sweaty face and fans her hands over her skin. The humidity in here is killing her, she feels like she’s drowning every time she takes a breath. Part of her is honestly amazed it’s not actually raining indoors right now.

Pidge distantly regrets not having Keith come with her. The tropical air around him was pleasantly dry- she hadn’t commented on it out there, but she noticed that when they were next to each other it wasn’t nearly as humid as when he was behind her and she was cutting a path through the foliage ahead. Some lucky side-effect of his Lion’s element, no doubt.

She sinks her head into the vines and pats the plants awkwardly in thanks, purring softly as she listens to the gentle hum of her machine doing its job. Her skull thrums weakly with the promise of a migraine later.

A delicate, unfamiliar sound snakes its way into her ears and she opens one eye to the dim violet light; she really must have used up everything if there are lights functioning on the lower edges of the walls. She was only supposed to power the most crucial parts of the computer. Floor lights are not a high-priority function. Especially not floor lights out in the hallway. She's going to have to apologize for wasting her Lion's entire loan.

A few ticks pass, and then she hears it again. It’s… almost a sniffling sort of sound.

She pulls her helmet back down over her humidity-heavy hair and rises on shaky legs, pausing by the panel for a moment. Eight minutes and fifteen seconds. She nods and notes it down, tapping on the side light of her helmet as she pushes off the door frame and steps out into the almost pitch black hallway.

 

The foliage deeper in the labyrinthine building is withered, dry and greyish brown. What few tendrils of greenery remain are clearly struggling for survival in here and the nearer plants try to latch onto the Green Paladin’s limbs as she passes. She’s almost surprised, considering how much quintessence she just lost. She could swear her energy is too low to be this attractive to any of the flora right now.

She shakes off a particularly stubborn coil of something like black ivy from her ankle, rolling her eyes and pushing deeper into the darkness after the noise.

It’s clearer here. The deeper she goes, the clearer it is. Both the noise and the debris.

Someone is crying.

It sounds almost like a child is crying, lost in the darkness, and Pidge pushes forward with renewed vigor at the thought.

There’s no reason there should be anyone in here, let alone a child, but… maybe, maybe one was left behind.

Maybe a victim of the Galra, when this station was abandoned…

Maybe someone was left behind, maybe they’ve survived…

She can’t imagine _how_ , but it’s possible. After everything she’s been through, if there’s one thing Pidge knows, it’s that almost anything is possible. In this fucked up universe almost anything is possible.

The Green Paladin turns a sudden corner and nearly wings herself on it, tripping forward and crashing hard into the wall in front of her. A jolt of pain flares up in her hands and forearms where she catches herself and she takes a moment to breathe through the pain, biting her lip as tears nip at her eyes.

A soft, barely perceptible noise flits through her ears; “ _Hello_?”

She rights herself, panting, whirling around for the noise. She strains her senses through the darkness- the lights are flickering erratically at her feet, all but useless for navigating, making it hard to see.

“ _Hello_?”

There is it again, that voice. Her heart twists behind her ribs. _They sound so young_ …

She follows the noise, weaving through the broken and tangled chaos of the ruins at a rapidly growing pace, straining for the sounds she now recognizes as the unmistakable sobs of a terrified child. The thunder of her boots on the metal floor and bouncing off the walls makes it hard for her to hear the voice calling her deeper and deeper into the research station. She takes a flight of stairs three at a time, barely sticking the landing on the last leap and stumbling hard.

She turns a corner and finds nothing but rusty metal and expansive, open darkness, the low violet floor lights fading off into the far distance, flickering softly. Pockets of deeper shadows line the walls like honeycombs, three or four up, countless out. No foliage grows here.

No foliage dares.

She casts her light around the room, brain whirling, when she throws the light on a tiny mess of trembling mauve rags curled up near one of the darker pockets; the pockets are open doors, the doors to _prisoner cells_ , and Pidge’s stomach reels with cold nausea as she imagines what kind of research was being conducted out here. The figure freezes under the light and Pidge calls to them softly. The head turns slightly at her call but they don’t turn to face her, and she takes a bold, shaking step forward. Something hollow and brittle crumbles underfoot.

“Hello,” she calls gently, keeping her voice low. She takes another step into the room. “Are you hurt? It’s alright, you can trust me- my name is Pidge, I’m a Paladin of Voltron. I’m here to help you.”

Pidge takes one step closer to the softly sniffling figure when her hair stands on end and her blood turns to ice in her veins. The sobbing stops abruptly.

“A Paladin- _well that explains the energy_ ,” a voice chirps, young and bright and sending a _shudder_ down Pidge’s spine so violent that her eyes flutter. The figure in rags dissipates in a wisp of smoke and she realizes-

 _Druid_.

That’s… that’s a Druid…

Shit fuck shit shit shitty shit fuck fuuuck…

Her bayard is already in her hand and she’s spinning around with every sense on high alert when her ankle catches on something and she slips backwards, landing hard on her back and knocking the wind right out of her own lungs. She opens her eyes and nearly shrieks when she finds her face inches from an alien skull, too many empty eye holes glowing unnaturally with her light and sharp teeth broken, the lower jaw split in half. Pidge scrambles onto her hands and backs rapidly toward the wall when she feels a flush of cool air on the left side of her face.

The Druid reaches from the darkness for her face, a delighted cackle echoing in the air as Pidge recoils with a vicious hiss, her bayard flashing in transformation. The talons scrape roughly against her skin and the teenager feels hot prickles of moisture bubble up where she was scratched. She growls as she pushes herself up on her feet, taking in the skeleton out of the corner of her eye- a prisoner's uniform, a victim. There are skeletons of every shape and size, scattered, whole, torn apart, near the cells, in the middle of the room, holding each other, sprawled out alone. Prisoners and Galran soldiers still wearing their armor, all of them long dead.

“I admit, I have no direct experience with you Terrans,” the Druid laughs as she examines her claws, “they would have never let me close enough, but then again who hasn’t read the great Haggar’s _extensive_ notes? I feel as if I know your kind already; and I must say you seem rather small even for your species- _undersized_ … Is a child _really_ the best your little planet has to offer?”

“ _Who are you_?” Pidge snarls as she positions the brilliant glowing blade of her spear between them, eyes narrowed in challenge. A strange sense of nausea bubbles in the back of her throat and she nearly chokes on her own words. The Druid glances up at her with wide eyes and her face is so youthful, so much younger and more innocent than Pidge had expected, so childlike that she’s almost disarming.

Almost. Only almost.

The confusion on her face must be clear because the robed figure grins, the expression terrifying as it stretches her soft face in a broad and threatening flash of teeth. She looks like a waifish girl until she smiles, until she laughs, and then she looks ancient, skeletal and hungry and vicious, a bloodthirsty fiend draped in tattered silk.

“You’ve really never heard of the great Sanguivara?” The Druid howls with shrill, mocking laughter, her mouthful of deadly sharp teeth catching in the dim light. Her eyes are almost manic as she leans closer to the Paladin. “You should read more, child. Should _have_ , anyway, since I’m afraid you won’t be leaving this room alive.”

Pidge lunges forward but the end of her spear catches nothing but darkness and thin wisps of smoke that sting in her eyes. She whips around chasing murmurs in the dim light, chasing ghosts and demons dancing on the glowing blade of her spear and just out of range.

“You should take comfort knowing your corpse will be a _wonderful_ help to us. Fret not,” the voice in the darkness croons, suddenly hot and heavy against the back of her neck, a delicate tapping running up her fear-rigid spine, “ _we’ll keep it warm for you_.”

 

Something is wrong.

She hasn’t checked in. She was about to start the download five minutes ago, and she’s missed her check in. And even then, this isn’t normal.

She’s never this quiet- not like this, never like this.

She doesn’t do silence like this if she doesn’t have to. He’s only known her for a few months, but he’s come to know her well enough. There’s almost always some dry quip hanging from her lips, some snarky purr or spit of sarcastic venom that she can’t resist dropping to an empty room while she works, something she always likes having an audience for in the form of their comms when she’s (literally or metaphorically) elbow deep in a computer. She has bad habits that she doesn't bother curbing, and technology-related attitude is one them.

On missions she’s usually all focus, all work, nothing he could ever complain about, but it’s different when she’s with machines, even simple tasks like this. She has a pattern, a set system of behaviors.

She’s never like this.

And when he tries to hail her, she doesn’t answer. A faint violet glow flickers in the distance deep inside the building.

He purses his lips as he looks at the narrow opening, shaking his head as he sighs. He's not waiting around for her to answer, even if it is nothing to worry about.  _Think small thoughts, think very small thoughts_.

 

She's not in the hub. He manages to make it through the rubble (how, he's honestly not too sure) and he follows that low guiding of his instincts, following something not-quite thought to the central hub of the station. Her device is blinking red quietly and he glances up at the screen. A complete download, a first for the team, and yet Pidge herself is nowhere to be found.

He unhooks the device and stuffs it in his pocket, following an unconscious trail out into the hallway, barely lit and flickering in a way that sets his hair on end. He doesn't call for his bayard, but he keeps one hand low and ready in case he has to.

This is wrong.

 

Her thin silhouette kneeling in the center of the dark room is all he sees in the distance and he knows it’s a trap, but he doesn’t hesitate.

It’s not a trap if you know about it- it’s a challenge. That was what Pidge had said when she went in. He takes that challenge without hesitation.

“Pidge!” He nearly crashes into her and grabs her shoulders, shaking her violently and whisper-screaming her name in her ears, his heart thundering as she slumps limp in his arms. Her breathing is shallow and her lids flutter behind her visor, just barely, eyes hazel-gold and terrified and _terrifyingly empty_. The whites of her eyes are so wide… her skin is bloodless, pale, _cold_ …

A shrill chuckle echoes in the darkness around them and the Red Paladin whips around, cradling the smaller teenager protectively close.

The voice in the darkness coos and the sound sets his hair on end. “Oh, what… does the child soldier have a mate, too? Humans really _do_ move fast, don’t they?”

His ears pin beneath his helmet as he snarls with bared teeth; “ _She’s my sister_.” He feels a twitch of life from the Paladin in his arms and he hopes that whatever it is, she’s fighting. He hopes she’s fighting through it. He needs her to fight through it.

A Druid manifests in the darkness in front of him, hard talons digging into the flesh of his cheeks as she grips his face in one thin, elegant hand, so much stronger than it looks. Warm moisture prickles under the sharp points and he flinches but refuses to break eye-contact. Her silky-furred face bears a mocking parody of child-like innocence that makes every cell in his body burn and scream with danger.

“If that is the case, I imagine only half,” she grins as she leans closer, long fangs flashing in the golden glow of her eyes. Her breath carries the scent of sour, rotten meat and it churns in his stomach and hot bile burns in the back of his throat as she breathes the scent of _death_ in his face. “I admit I am _curious_ to see what kind of union led to something like you, half-“human”, half…”

The way she purrs the word ‘union’ sends a disgusted chill down his spine. She hums high in her nose as she twists his head around to examine him better. He growls low in his throat in response as he leans back, nostrils flaring as he holds the Green Paladin even tighter and bares his own sharp teeth in warning.

The Druid reels back at the sight of his bared teeth and she spits on the ground in disgust when she realizes, flying into a vicious rant.

“ _I will find the traitor_ -”

“Good luck,” the Paladin sneers unheard, rubbing Pidge’s arms aggressively to warm her. He can feel her biceps twitch beneath his palms. “Even _I_ don’t know who.”

He picks up a shuddering whisper, barely perceptible, and he looks down. Pidge is staring up at him with terrified eyes, gripping the black fabric of his suit in her trembling hands. Her lips move, a whisper again slipping free. The dim violet in the distance and the soft blue glow of their armor shows just enough that he can see the trembling of her mouth as she whispers something he can't hear.

“Pidge? Pidge, Pidge come on, talk to me,” he murmurs, holding her closer, straining for her voice under the Druid’s rant. One gloved hand settles on his cheek, vibrating against his face. He leans into her touch, leaning down closer, searching her face. “Come on, you can do it. You can fight this, you’re tough- fight like a girl, Pidge, come on.”

Her lips shake, the inner line blood-red against the ashen pallor of her flesh.

They move again and again and again until _finally_ he hears her. One word, whispered again and again like a frantic prayer.

“ _Run_.”

Her throat trembles and her eyes don’t blink and she whispers desperately, dark blood oozing from thin scratches on her face he didn’t see until now, scratches only just now bleeding, or that only just bled. He wipes at a streak of blood and finds no cut below it. Her prayer, her _plea_ morphs, rushing out in shallow breaths as her hand slips from his face to clutch at the high neck of his armor.

“ _H-her nails_ ,” she whispers, wildly flickering eyes searching his face in desperation. Her whole body trembles so violently she’s almost shaking herself out of his hold. “ _Ru-run_. _Don’t let her t-touch you. It- it’s in her na-ails. R-r-run_.”

The Druid croons low in her throat, licking at her talons slowly. Flashes of red disappear behind her thin violet lips.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that, child.”

Pidge’s head turns to take the Druid in, and tremors rack through her in overwhelming waves and her heart thunders in her ears and Keith feels a crushing wave of _fear_ crashing over him, pure and raw and emanating out from the core of her being in growing pulses. The fear makes his knees numb and his pulse erratic and drowns out nearly everything else as Pidge struggles against him and pushes at his chest, voice weak and desperate as she fights.

“ _R-run, Keith. D-don’t look back_.”

Something snaps. Her body goes rigid with a sharp intake of breath and her fingers blindly grasp her bayard from the floor. Keith only notices now that her weapon was out of her reach until he moved her, inactive and harmless in the dark.

Keith only notices now the thick smear of blazing red streaking down the center of her breastplate, starting from a line high on her throat and streaking down over her stomach. Like with the blood on her face she isn’t cut, he can’t see a cut anywhere on her, but the dark, sticky scarlet on her body is still unmistakably blood, almost as if it had been poured on her.

“ _I’m so s-s-sorry. F-for everything. Th-this is my fault_.”

The bayard in her tense fingers takes form, the short glowing V of her blade almost blinding in the dim light. A low, giddy cackle rings through cavernous room. Pidge takes a shaking breath, her words strangled by fear as the muscles in her upper back stiffen. Sorrow and apology simmer just below it as the Red Paladin's arms start to slip. Her voice twists into a sob and she screws her eyes shut as saltwater burns down her cheeks.

“ _Please run_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Enjoy". Ha.
> 
> You have no idea how tempted I was to end this update with the line “we’ll keep it warm for you”, like no idea. It was so tempting to leave this update on a cliffhanger like that. Not that I didn't leave it on a damn cliffhanger, but still...
> 
> I feel like this needs to be said- I do not understand machines. I am just so not tech-savvy I am an embarrassment to my entire generation. So if I wrote something tech-y weird, that’s because I know not what the fuck I say.
> 
> Interesting note, totally irrelevant, when I first writing this fic way back when, long before I started sharing it online, Shiro and Keith's locations were switched. Shiro was... still not well, and Keith was injured and a castaway and also dealing with the Galra thing but that was a bit much to put on him. Not sure what else to say here except that originally it was most likely going to be Pidge and Shiro ending up here, but that was in a super early outline and changed pretty quickly. Also considered a few other dynamics, but this was the way the story flowed.


	23. Highly Volatile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If only they had known why it was abandoned.
> 
> She was a danger to her own handlers.
> 
> If only they had known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two of two, it's a double-update today.

Allura notices first that the Castle is quieter than it should be.

She tries not to pay it any mind, quiet is hardly a bad thing, and both of the Paladins she has back are known for their independent streaks, but when she’s the only person at the table for lunch she can’t help but feel suspicious. She knew Coran was going to take his meal later when he was done working, and Pidge has a habit of skipping meals and snacking later, but Keith not eating is extremely unusual. Especially since he's come out of the pod, he's had a much more voracious appetite in recent weeks. She takes care of her dishes and settles her mice on her shoulders as she quietly searches her Castle with growing suspicion.

Neither Paladin is in their bedroom, or the ‘living room’, or the training deck, and when she pokes her head into Pidge’s lab as a last resort she finds it just as empty as any other space. She’s about to head down into the greenhouse when something stops her.

She feels a faint, almost unnoticeable tickling flare in her starburst scar and purses her lips as she stalks toward the Bridge instead, scanning for a Lion she suspects is not in its bay.

Much to her surprise the Green Lion is still in the Castle, curled up in its bay and presently inactive. The doors to the hangar have not even budged since the last time the Green Paladin flew the Lion.

But that doesn’t mean…

The Princess checks the bay where they keep the small podships, and she scans the rows until she finds one of them is conspicuously missing. The door records show they haven't been opened, but she wouldn't put it past her youngest Paladin to find a way around that. She activates the tracker on it and rolls her eyes almost out of her skull entirely when the device shows the ship is halfway across this little planet, great lakes and continents away. It's settled in the valley of a small subcontinent in the northern hemisphere, docile and inactive.

She very nearly does lose her eyes when she notices it’s parked close to a half-concealed metal structure that she soon realizes is an abandoned Galra research station. She buries her fingers in her temples with a low growl, massaging her head and praying to every god she knows of for some semblance of inner peace.

 _Of course_.

_Of course Pidge would do something like this. Of course she would._

_She should have known._

 

Red is flicking her tail.

No…

She’s not flicking it. She’s _thrashing_ it.

She’s slamming the hard, lethal tip of her tail into the ground, again and again in a violent and erratic rhythm. She’s using what little energy she has of her own to slam her tail into the floor and the walls of her hangar. Coran can hear her from his work in the space above the Black Lion’s bay where the last repairs to the wormhole generator are being wrapped up, done any minute now. There is nothing else that noise could be. It's too irregular, too violent to be anything else.

And if she’s doing that, there’s a reason, and if she has a reason…

He opens a call to the Princess at the same time she tries to hail him.

“They're on their way back now,” she hisses, not making eye-contact through the screen. It takes Coran a moment to play mental catch-up to what she means as she sets her shoulders with her mother’s familiar fury and defiance. “Don't worry, I'll handle it.”

The older Altean can only nod. He's not sure he wants to be there when Allura rips into the two of them.

 

When the commandeered podship docks Allura is tapping her foot rapidly, arms folded, jaw and ears tense with frustration as she gathers herself up for the dressing-down of a lifetime.

She cannot _believe_ her Paladins would do something this reckless, _and without even informing her first_. If they had just asked she probably would have said yes- she admits this is hindsight talking, she might have said no, but _still_. She probably would have even escorted them. Honestly scouting around an abandoned Galra base sounds like a _refreshing_ way to spend a morning compared to how she’s spent the past weeks.

The ship skids and bounces along the floor before coming to the sloppiest halt she’s ever seen. The one-way black plasma glass of the front dissipates as it lands, and two figures in thick, muddy red stumble out over the wing before the engines have even fully shut down.

Not… not _in_ red.

Covered with red.

There’s no reason-

Humans-

 _Humans bleed red_ …

The taller one supports the smaller, pushing one hand into their side and supporting them with one arm under their shoulders. The smaller one doesn’t seem to be able to stand on their own, and one leg drags behind them as they’re carried more than guided out.

She can feel their energy underneath the sweat and the muck and the… and _the blood_ , the rich, vibrant scarlet blood, and she recognizes her Paladins. Pain flares in her scar, the twin points screaming with fear and agony. The right side is white hot, feral, and the left is weak and desperate and consumed with terror, and they both claw at her from the inside out.

Allura locks eyes with Keith, and his eyes are unfocused and hazy through the hair limp in his face, and suddenly there’s a horrible, shrill scream that fills the hangar. The noise dies abruptly and the Princess lunges forward, catching them both in her arms as the legs of the Red Paladin give out beneath him. The smell of copper and iron, sweat and terror, ash and soot all floods her senses, overwhelms her, and she struggles to catch her breath as she screams again (she was the one who screamed the first time, that was her), screaming for Coran, begging for his help.

The energy of the Paladins in her arms is flickering and weak and it takes everything she has not to lose herself to the terror of that weak essence and what it means.

Pidge is unconscious against her chest, but the curling energy low in her body is steady if dangerously faint. The quintessence in Keith is flickering and erratic and weaker even as he somehow manages to keep his eyes open. He coughs, glancing up at her with an awkward exhale just as a pair of boots race into the room behind her, and he gives her an apologetically crooked smile, his sharp teeth smeared with blood.

“Sorry,” he coughs. His brows quirk together weakly. “We- we didn’t know…”

“What happened?” Allura murmurs, watching as a horrified Coran scoops Pidge into his arms, watching as the small Green Paladin’s head lolls back, limp and yielding. Thin tracts carve down her face through the scarlet and the soot to reveal dangerously wan skin. The younger Altean supports Keith, catching him under his knees and carrying him in the same position when his legs shake and he leans into her hold without complaint. Shiro is the only Paladin who's never complained out loud when she's carried him; she's not used to her Paladins accepting help this easily, this isn't right.

“Druid,” he sighs, resting his temple against her collarbone. His energy nearly flickers out and the lopsided screams of pain in her scar as a result nearly blind her. Her ears ring violently as she pushes through it, forcing herself to stay on her own feet.

“Who?”

“Dunno,” he gasps, voice wet with blood and body slack as she races toward the medical bay behind Coran. His quintessence hiccups and Allura restrains herself as she feels it begin to steady out into something less terrifying, something steadier. “But she’s… is fine, now. She can’t, anymore…”

“The Druid…?”

The Red Paladin hiccups softly. She hears him sniffle and she says nothing as he pushes his forehead into the side of her neck, a soggy rumble stuttering in his chest. He sniffles again, voice low. “Dead.”

Allura knows Druids. She knows how hard they are to _fight_ , how hard they are to _hurt_. The things they can withstand… Killing one is a task far easier said than it is _ever_ done… “Are you sure-?”

“Burned alive. Very dead.” There’s a pause as they round a corner. His next words are almost gargled in his throat and a thick streak of blood runs over his chin. His voice is low with pain, shame, with deep and shockingly cold anger- “ _I made sure_.”

Allura shudders as they reach the pods, a coil of nausea in the back of her throat. Galran Druids are many things, and can survive even more, but… nothing can survive being burned alive. Not even a Druid.

Thankfully.

She kicks at the base of a pod and the machine obeys the unspoken demand, laying down to allow her to lay her Paladin in it. He grabs her arm as she pulls away and his face is deadly serious as he reaches for a small device in a pocket on his hip.

“Pidge,” he coughs, pressing something cold into her palm. “Is she…?”

Allura glances at the pod next to them as it glimmers shut and Coran places one blood-smeared hand on the control pad. A steady flash lights up where the pulse monitor should be and she breathes out a shuddering sigh of relief. She nods without making eye contact, pulling away with the half-sphere.

“Worry about yourself,” she sighs, inputting the command to seal the pod. She brushes a sticky strand of long black hair out of his face before the glass comes down, lingering for a moment. “She’s fine, thanks to you.”

“Wasn’t,” the Red Paladin coughs as the mist fills the air. She catches a glimmer of saltwater in his eyes as he swallows, screwing his eyes shut to the cooling mist. 

Allura presses the backs of her hands into her face as she watches her Paladins slip into a dreamless stasis, rage and horror clouding her thoughts as she hiccups through her fear. She can’t even begin to know what to think right now. Her fingers wrap over the half-sphere so tightly she can feel the flat of it leaving bruising crevices in her skin. If she holds it hard enough she might be able to draw blood. Or she could crush it- she drops it to the floor, listening as it clatters off across the room.

“She’s… she’s fine,” Coran murmurs, leaning forward until his nose is nearly touching the pad. “Her heartbeat is weak, and she’s lost a lot of blood, but… she’s _fine_ …”

Allura glances up at him, opening and closing her mouth silently, face twisting into a question he reads but cannot answer. Coran moves over to the pod holding the Red Paladin and he scans the pad beside it.

“He’s fine. He’s the same way,” the older Altean sighs, unable to come up with an explanation. “He’s lost blood, and his heartbeat is weak, but he’s _fine_. The pods can’t find any injuries anywhere. There’s… nothing. Nothing’s wrong with them.”

Allura only nods. She lets herself sink to her knees, arms wrapped over her own waist, and she nods.

She takes a shuddering breath, tucks her head against her knees as she bows forward, and she nods.

More blood than she had ever thought she’d see now coats her dress, her hands, her hair…

She doesn’t scream, she can’t, but _stars_ does she remember how it felt…

She remembers too much…

 

The Paladin armor is designed to repair itself. Clever little nanites, top of the line at the time, imbued deep in the material mean the fabric stitches itself up seamlessly and the hard shells heal over even the deepest and the fiercest of attacks.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing, Coran decides.

Good, because it means it can protect its Paladins even when damaged, it doesn’t need replacing (though it can be if parts are destroyed or lost), and bad because it means he cannot see what happened for himself. The armor on the bodies of the young Paladins now healing is dented and scratched, filthy, but already well into the process of repairing itself- body heat makes the material repair faster than if it’s left in a cool room by itself.

He leans over the open edge of the podship they stole, uncaring of the slick blood and filth smearing against his skin, it’s unnoticeable against the volume already covering his body, peering down into the cockpit. Their helmets are loose on the floor, and they’re the only clues Coran has as to what happened. He can see the damage repairing already and climbs in for a better look.

He scoops one helmet from the floor (Keith’s, he notes, as it’s still red when he wipes away the blood and the filth on the crown of it) and turns it over in his calloused hands slowly.

There are unmistakable gouges in the sides of it, around the face of it, underneath all of the blood and the soot. Gouges that are singed slightly at the edges, shallow, made in quick, vicious strikes, mostly striking up and striking out. Most of them cross over the face and burn the plasma glass. One frighteningly deep cut is buried in the side of the left jaw, and the irregular mark looks as if whatever made it was stuck in the material and then wriggled free. Ice settles in his stomach as he sets it on the control panel and reaches for the other helmet.

One deep, arching trench is carved into the side of this helmet, cutting diagonally through the glowing centerline, and broken sheer blue plasma glass from the visor clatters to the floor as it shifts. The Altean rolls it in his hands. There’s only the one strike to this helmet. The gouge is so deep that when Coran turns it over he can see a sliver of his own hand through the slowly closing gap. Threads of soft brown hair pulled out at the roots cling to the gash, pushed out as the material heals over.

He _refuses_ to jump to conclusions, he _refuses_ to start making wild accusations, but…

He doesn’t like what this might mean.

He doesn’t like the story he’s reading, the things these helmets are telling him.

He’s missing too many details.

A timid squeaking draws him out of his head and Coran glances up.

“Mazarine, little mouse,” the Altean murmurs, “what are you doing? You shouldn’t see this. You should be with Allura.”

The soft round ears pin back and the red-eyed mouse chirps gently, edging closer on the parts of the ship not smeared with alien blood or with soot. He doesn’t understand the mice the way the Princess does, but he can still read their general states well enough; and this mouse is concerned. He puts an elbow up and the little mouse leaps onto his arm, scurrying up to settle on his shoulder.

Mazarine chitters gently and their soft whiskers brush against Coran’s neck. He leans his cheek to rest lightly on the rodent’s head. He takes a tired breath as he sets Pidge’s helmet in a blood-soaked chair.

“Let’s get this over to get cleaned up, shall we?”

Keeping busy is the only way he knows how to cope sometimes.

Especially when he has no idea what just happened.

Especially when he’d rather not suspect…

He's seen enough mangled Paladins in his relatively short life, he doesn't _want_ to suspect…

 

Allura keeps a quiet vigil into the evening, nails digging deep into her own biceps through her filthy dress, watching as the young Paladins bodies become less and less anemic.

Pidge wakes up first, clambering out of the pod and panting desperately as she tears at her armor, clawing at herself like a wild animal. She manages to pull away her hard white and green shell, her soft black underlayer, stripping herself down to her waist as she claws at her own flesh, pulling and twisting as she searches for something that she can’t find. Allura catches the smaller Paladin’s wrists in her hands and pleads with her to stop, to breathe, but Pidge can only hiccup and choke on air as her feral golden eyes chase for something only she knows exists. Tears streak down her face, down the same shallow tracts already carved through the blood as she stares into the Princess’ eyes, mouth trembling as she whimpers a word in unbridled fear;

“ _Druid_ …”

Allura embraces the teenager, holding her close enough that the Princess can feel the erratic thunder of her heartbeat in her chest.

“It’s alright, Pidge, you’re safe. The Druid can’t hurt you anymore.”

The Green Paladin’s breathing is dangerously fast and her words are airy. “She-she-she’s-”

“Pidge, listen to me please,” she murmurs, exhaling in surprise as Pidge’s shaking arms wrap around her in a painful vice. “You’re safe now. She can’t hurt you anymore. You’re safe.”

“She didn’t- she did, but it wasn’t- she-”

She holds the girl tighter, wishing against knowledge that the Paladin can feel what the Altean feels, wishing she can feel her calm, her understanding. “Shh, it’s alright. You’re safe. You and Keith are safe, you’re both alright.”

Pidge rips away from Allura like she’s been electrocuted, eyes dangerously wide. Before the Altean can say anything Pidge is already whipping around toward the pod where the other Paladin lays stationary. She presses both hands to the glass, closing her eyes and resting her forehead against the cold surface as her frantic breathing finally starts to level out.

“Fire…” Pidge’s shoulders droop. She sniffles softly, the words painful and twisting over her tongue. “There was fire, she- I can still hear her _screaming- Allura, the screaming_ …”

“He told me she died,” Allura tells her gently, putting both hands on the Green Paladin’s shoulders. “She can’t hurt you any more. You’re safe.”

“She- We- I almost-” Pidge freezes, the muscles along her back tense. She swallows faintly and exhales as she turns to face the Altean, wrapping her arms over herself more for her own comfort than any remembered sense of modesty. She looks painfully small as she curls in on herself. “I-I need a shower,” she whispers, every word a fight for control. She glances back over her shoulder for a moment. “Get me when he comes out of it… Before. Not when.”

The Green Paladin is gone before Allura can stop her.

 

She scrubs the soot and the mud and the scarlet she refuses to name all from her flesh until it is raw and pink, and then she keeps scrubbing. She holds her breath and keeps her head under boiling water until she is convinced there is no filth left against her scalp, and then she does it again. And again. And again.

She can still hear the screaming…

And she can smell the burning flesh, the burning hair…

And she can see the eyes, golden, glowing, bloodthirsty…

The flashing teeth, the humid air heavy in her wounds, the boil of her own blood, the boil of blood that wasn’t her own, the whispers and the venomous words crooned from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The laughter…

 _The laughter_ …

The claws and the teeth and the complete loss of control and the laughter in her ears…

She does something she promised she would never do, back when the Paladins were all learning how to bond mentally, back in the early days after everyone promised to be open, to share, to be honest with each other in everything.

She takes the things she dares not name and she hides them. She buries them deeply, hiding them in the furthest recesses of her own mind, and she walls that part of herself off. She’s always been decent enough at compartmentalizing, and she stuffs everything into a box inaccessible in the dark. She refuses to think, to remember.

It won’t work, it’s not a long-term solution by any stretch of the imagination, but she doesn’t care. It’s the only option she has right now.

 

She wraps herself in thick clothes, soft and comfortable and heavy on her skin the way her armor isn’t. She pads slowly back across the Castle, running her hands through half-damp hair, pushing it out of her face when she sees the ship is in orbit again- it’s been at least ten hours since she left the Castle. The familiar, safe blue lights that line the floor are dimmed for the evening cycle. The Green Paladin looks through one of the windows to the small planet below, peering past the moon between the Castle and the alien world she wishes she had never laid eyes on.

A wildfire burns, rages, tearing across the landscape of a small subcontinent in the northern hemisphere without mercy. Black ash fills huge swaths of the sky.

Pidge’s stomach drops out.

 _That’s her fault_.

Green rumbles low in her head through the exhaustion, embracing her Paladin from the inside. Pidge welcomes her Lion’s familiar and safe mental touch and pulls the sensation around herself until she feels the edges between girl and machine blur, until she cannot definitively define the boundaries between them, until the memories of her morning fade into the background.

A sharp jolt flits through her Lion and Green prods at the Paladin gently- **_He’s waking up._**

Pidge finds herself suddenly sprinting back across the Castle at a speed that makes the muscles in her legs throb, and she stumbles through the doors to the medical bay just as the familiar whoosh of glass dissipates into nothingness. Distantly Allura’s voice floats through her head (the Princess must have called to her, but Green called first) as she takes almost cautious steps toward the Paladin quickly waking up.

Caution is thrown to the wind the moment his eyes open and she nearly tackles him. She drags him to the ground and buries her face in the dried blood and the heavy soot clinging to his armor, laughing and crying in the same moment as she crushes the air out of him.

He holds her so tightly that his claws leave bruising crescents in the skin of her shoulders through his gloves and through her sweatshirt, murmuring soft apologies and trembling as the two of them share a living nightmare unspoken.

 

The most unnerving thing, Allura and Coran decide, is the way Pidge and Keith simply… _ignore_ whatever it was that happened on the planet they've learned was Serva Nine.

They don’t talk about it- even to the mice, even among themselves, and Allura has asked the mice to take turns listening in on the off chance they _do_ decide to discuss it away from Altean ears, but they just… don’t.

They don’t talk about it.

Ever.

It’s almost like it never happened.

They goof off in their free time and they continue on their day-to-day tasks the way they have over the past few days and weeks like nothing has changed. And in a way, it almost  _hasn’t_ , because whatever happened on Serva Nine didn’t even leave them with physical scars, even though it clearly should have. Even though they clearly expected it to, given the way Pidge tore off her armor upon waking, given the way Keith tried to lighten the mood and joked about the two of them giving Shiro a run for his money before Pidge had murmured otherwise. (Allura had heard that even though it had been whispered, but she hadn’t said anything. She couldn't speak through the sickness in her mouth as she imagined the meaning.)

Allura knows that everyone deals with their trauma differently- hell, she knows firsthand, and she knows her own coping methods aren’t always healthy- but she worries that Pidge and Keith simply aren’t dealing with it at all.

And when she tries to help them deal with it they freeze right up, they lock up tighter than a Zukeran jewelry box, and she’d actually have an easier time pulling teeth than getting any answers out of her Paladins.

(Not that she’s considering pulling teeth _for_ answers. At least, not yet…)

Coran doesn’t try to push. Instead he just makes himself available, he makes sure they know he’s there, and when the Paladins are working he pays careful attention to how they move and how they speak, rather than what they say or what they do. He tries to read between the lines, ignoring what his imagination brewed up from their helmets.

He notices the way they avoid training with their bayards. He notices the tension that knots in their limbs when Allura calls for them to practice with their weapons, and the way the tension changes depending on the weapon they use. Keith especially is wary of his sword when squaring off against the Green Paladin- only against her, though. Against a droid or Allura, or when they work together, nothing has changed.

He notices that they are rarely off on their own anymore. The most independent of the Paladins almost refuse to be by themselves anymore. If Pidge is in her unmanageable disaster of a lab, Keith is usually in the room with her, curled up on her former bed with a book or his tablet in his hands while she tinkers. Sometimes he hands her tools or parts if she asks. If Keith is working out Pidge is usually on the deck with him- not always working out herself, sometimes just in the corner with her laptop or her current project, but still there. If he’s facing a droid she’s usually making sarcastic quips and cheers from her seat that make him roll his eyes or laugh dryly.

And he notices that they don’t sleep in their own rooms anymore.

Allura doesn’t catch on to that change immediately only because she rarely sleeps in her own bed half the time anyway, so someone else passing out in a communal space is just doing the same thing she often does.

But after the third night in a row that he catches the Paladins curled up on the couch, tablets or computers in hand, or with an Earth movie on the projector, he considers that they might be afraid to sleep alone.

Allura’s theory works too- they’re afraid the other will disappear during the night if they aren’t there to protect them. They _did_ run into a Druid. Druids are a breed of nightmare all their own…

But ultimately the Alteans realize there’s nothing they can do for the young Paladins that they haven’t done already.

They can only hope that Shiro will know what to do.

They can only hope they'll find him quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is probably honestly only going to get darker from this point on. There will still be good days, humor and bonding and cute shit and funny shit, but this is probably about to get 'The Apprentice and the Morningstar' level intense in terms of raw violence in places. I might need to change the tags and ratings and shit on it later depending on how that goes.
> 
> I am still working very hard on that Shiro/Allura oneshot I promised, I swear. I kinda worked on the wrong nsfw oneshot the other night (alcohol is a writer's best friend and worst enemy at the same time, lemme tell you what) so it might be a little longer.


	24. Iron and Ivory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The single overhead light flashes across iron, glints dangerously on ivory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven’t mentioned it, but there’s stuff going on back home in our solar system while this is all happening. Figure since I’m having some trouble with the next couple chapters I give you guys a little glance at what’s going down on back on Earth and what we might find when we eventually come back.
> 
> You’re all wonderful and I love you and when did this fic get like 2800 hits what is going on I swear it’s like since the last update there’ve been like 300 or 400 hits what is going on.
> 
> Fun fact: this chapter takes place right around the time in a future chapter Pidge says the word "Stormtrooperfucker".
> 
> It will make sense in context I promise.

“I find these measures a bit…  _dramatic_ , don’t you?” Rebecca Holt laughs, tugging gently on the handcuffs chained to the table in front of her. She laces her fingers together and tilts her head at the uniformed young man standing across the table, a bemused frown quirking at her mouth. “I mean, I know I used to have a reputation for a bit of a mean punch, but I can’t quite reach you if you’re standing up. Unless you let me have a chair to stand on, of course.”

He looks young, maybe he was one of the upper classmen from when her son was still at the academy. She doesn’t bother asking though. The look on his face keeps her friendly curiosity tempered. He’d been eerily silent the entire walk to this room and she can’t imagine he’ll start being friendly now. He heads toward the door with a disdainful look, shooting a terse warning over his shoulder. “Commander Charles should be here shortly.”

The blonde blinks in surprise as the door shuts behind him. Samuel Charles is a fairly high-ranking man, high enough to have clearance to see the Green Lion before her daughter was returned to it. She’s surprised he would be the one interrogating her. He’s a bit… high-profile for something like this.

He’s not usually the kind of man who gets his hands dirty.

She fidgets in her seat, wiggling uncomfortably on the metal chair. The temperature in here is on the chilly side and the casual summer dress she had worn when she went to meet her friends for lunch (she’d been arrested in the restaurant while waiting on the others, because apparently the men upstairs  _love_  to have an audience for these sorts of things; she hadn’t even gotten her appetizer yet) is not quite thick enough the keep the sharpness of the air from her skin. She looks around the room- four grey walls, a camera in a cage in the corner to her right, the space all bare concrete and cold and unnervingly ominous considering the circumstances. She’s never been in this part of the base, and she knows she shouldn’t be here now.

She knows this is where she’d have ended up if she and the others had gotten careless with their protection of Thace. Just that thought alone is enough to terrify her in hindsight, what could have happened, what could have been. What could be _now_ \- there’s only one floor beneath this building officially, a single basement, but she went down the elevator for a full minute. She knows where she is. Every cell in her body is vibrating with fear.

She centers herself quietly in her head, breathing slowly, soothing that growing anxiety boiling under her skin. Rebecca looks up as the door opens and the tepid camera-ready smile she was aiming for slips from her face as her eyes narrow sharply- she imagined the wrong Charles.

“Why,  _Savannah_ , I haven’t seen you in  _years_. How’s the brother?”

The taller woman glares as she crosses the room to take the seat in front of the former astronaut. She always did hate being compared to her more successful family members, even if she was fairly successful in her own right- and from the stories Felicitie has shared, apparently Savannah Charles still carries a bitter torch over being passed over for the role of Commander on the Hecate I mission. Apparently she has tried a few times to lay subtle blame on Petrovna for what happened but none of her little barbs have ever found purchase.

The others can’t say they’re sorry they missed out having her on the mission. Bora herself flew a three month mission with her once and announced that it was without question the  _single_   _worst experience of her life_.

“How’s the back, Rebecca? Your head giving you any trouble?” The woman quirks one brow, eyes roaming over her form as if she were defenseless. “Are you _cold_?”

“I’m lovely,” she hisses with a venomous smile, fear finding itself replaced with familiar seething hatred. She forces the shivering in her muscles to still. “Just lovely.”

“I must admit, I'm glad you did half my job for me, going and telling the families like that… Shame not everyone understands the concept of a ‘secret’, though,” the woman sniffs, sliding a file from a tiny stack on the side of the table to sit under her hands. Every strand of prematurely silvered hair is tucked neatly into a ballerina bun on the nape of her neck and her uniform is picture-perfect. She probably still measures out everything with an iron and a ruler like she did back at the academy… “Well, I don’t feel like wasting any more time with worthless trivialities today, let’s get right to it then. Where is she? Where did she take the alien vessel?”

Rebecca pointedly looks toward the ceiling. The chains of her handcuffs clink as she shifts her hands, splaying them out in a soft, shoulder-less shrug.

“That’s not an answer,  _Rebecca_.”

“I think we both know it is,  _Savannah_.”

Rebecca settles her chin on one hand, drumming the fingers of the other against the table as a smug smile works slowly across her face. Loathing is easy, warm, and she holds tightly to it, keeping her fear far away. 

“You know, I’ll be completely honest, I didn’t believe the others when they said you were still holding a grudge. But they weren’t even close,” she chuckles, leaning forward. “You are as bitter a bitch as the day we graduated. How are you still alive when you are  _this_  salty about something that happened nearly twenty years ago? I mean the sheer volume of sodium in your veins right now is clearly beyond lethal levels and I’m honestly kind of marveling here.”

She leans back from her hand, flicking her fingers up dismissively and folding her arms in front of her. Loathing makes her comfortable, confident, and it soothes out the tension in her spine.

“Actually, no, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. Probably a deal with the devil, like everything else you’ve ever done. Or,  _sorry_ ,” she grins widely, “do you just call him  _daddy_?”

“You’re still the same snarky, arrogant little shit from the academy,” Charles rolls her eyes and leans back in her chair. She surveys Rebecca down her nose. “How your husband never wizened up and divorced you I will  _never_  know. Lucky for him that he’s dead then, shame about that though-“

Rebecca narrows her eyes and grinds her teeth together as she steels herself. Charles smells blood in the water though and she keeps right at it, knowing exactly where the widow’s vulnerabilities lie.

“-and how can you say I have a deal with the devil going when it’s clearly the blood of your loved ones keeping your stupid ass alive? That’s three for sure so far, Rebecca, and I’m not willing to bet the fourth one is much better off right now. She’s  _fifteen_. I’m willing to bet the devil thinks that’s worth  _a lot_  of extra years on this rock.”

It is only because the cold steel table itself is bolted to the floor that it is not used as a lethal bludgeoning weapon when Rebecca lunges. The handcuffs snap her back and she lands bruisingly hard on her elbows, snarling and seething up through her mussed bangs. Charles doesn’t even blink.

“That’s what I thought.” She flicks the folder open, twirling a glossy photo around to settle in front of the shorter woman. “Your impulsive, dramatic emotional response to the slightest bit of stress was always your biggest weakness. You’ve always been frail. You  _really_  haven’t changed. Now tell me, where is your daughter? Where is Katherine Holt? Where are the others she was with? Where is the weapon she stole from us?”

Rebecca spits through her teeth and a thin bomb of saliva and mucus splatters on the other woman’s uniform. There’s no outward reaction but she likes to imagine the woman is downright livid underneath that stony exterior.

“Even if I did know, why the hell would I tell you?”

“Why  _wouldn’t_  you?” Charles prods, aiming carefully for the other woman’s weakest spot. “Don’t you  _love_  her?”

Rebecca slowly sinks back into her chair, dragging the photo with her. She holds it carefully in both hands. Her daughter’s freckled face glowers up at her through fluffy bangs and too-big glasses beside by two grinning boys, one holding the camera at a sharp angle and the other holding both of the smaller teenagers up in a crushing hug. The image is dated in early January and the text underneath from where it was posted on social media reads- ‘ _@HotshotLancelot_   _back for the new semester and ready to rock the flightsimms with @HunkSolo and this reclusive nerd who still wont give me his acc info so if you know it hmu_ ’. She smiles fondly. The Blue and Yellow Paladins, the legs that support her child now, across galaxies and systems Rebecca will never see. She hopes they’re doing well.

“Of course I do. Emotion is not weakness, Savannah. You never understood that.” She doesn’t tear her gaze from the picture, thumbing the sides gently as she remembers the mantra her sister had lived by, had died by. “Emotion is strength. Love is strength.”

“Is love why you concealed an extra-terrestrial from the government for six months?”

Her breath congeals into a hard lump inside her throat and she looks up slowly.

“No, not you,” Savannah grins dangerously, her first expression of the day. “But for Bora, yes, oh yes it was  _love_  wasn’t it? We’ve been puzzling it together. Isn’t that why she took those weeks off for a bad case of the flu right around that time _\- what was his name again_ \- ah yes, Keith was born? I must admit, had we known… Well, that doesn’t matter now.”

“Are you  _threatening him_ -” she bristles, body tensing involuntarily at the very idea of anyone threatening Bora’s son.

“ _If I could, I would_ ,” Charles snaps coldly back through gritted teeth. “Where  _are_  they? You have to know, Rebecca. She had to have told you where she was going, what she was doing.”

Rebecca slouches back in her seat, glaring off into the corner. “Even if I did, why would it matter? It’s not like you can go get her.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

Rebecca snorts.

“Your daughter hid in our ranks, even though she could never get to Kerberos on her own, she could never even get close before she’d be caught, found. We want what she wanted. We want answers. And if you won’t give us answers,” she pulls a small clicker from her pocket, turning on a flatscreen embedded in the wall behind the woman in handcuffs, “then maybe someone else will.”

“There is  _nothing_  you can gain from this,” Rebecca spits, not turning in her seat, not willing to look. Her hair stands on end and she attributes the trembling in her limbs to the chill in the air. “There is nothing you can gain, you’re never going to tell anyone what you’d learn- unless you plan on trying to sell this information to the Galra and honestly that’s low even for you, even for the men on the other end of your leash. There is nothing you can  _possibly_  get from this.”

“We just want answers.”

Savannah Charles pauses for a moment, one sculpted brow quirking as she considers.

“And maybe a little payback, but who cares why  _I’m_  doing it. Fact is, the men upstairs want answers, Rebecca. You have them. We know you do.” She inclines her head, looking at the screen. “And so do they. You and I both know that if none of you ever walk out these doors again the world will never know, so I  _sincerely_  recommend that you open that pretty little mouth of yours and you start  _singing_.”

“You’re missing one,” Rebecca sneers as she takes in the video feed on the screen from the corner of one cold hazel eye. She knew already, she  _knew_  they couldn’t possibly have all of them, but knowing for certain fills her with a profound sense of satisfaction all the same.

“Yes, well, we’ll have her soon enough. Now start talking. It’s one of the only things you’ve ever been any good at anyway.” Charles looks her up and down slowly with that same gaze that leaves her feeling vulnerable and exposed. “You know I’m still not convinced your entrance exam wasn’t forged. Your sister was smart, but she was weak. I have no doubt she’d have helped you. Better women deserved your opportunities.”

Rebecca laces her fingers together on the table and levels her gaze, baring her teeth the way she taught her children to do when they were small, the way that she and her sister learned at their mother’s knee, learning how to intimidate men three times her size with only a ‘smile’. She bares her teeth in that way that is only a smile in the most liberal sense of the word and an animal threat display in all true honesty. She bares her teeth with the promise of action should she  _ever_  be given the chance, venom hanging to her every word.

“ _Fuck you, Savannah_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of feelings about season two but I love that I was so right about some things and so wrong about others. Allura’s staff- bam, point for Tomcat. The names for the mice- not so much. My idea for the origins of Voltron- not even close, but fuck it. And I’m sticking with Rebecca, by the way. I ain’t about to go back and change anything. (Also Colleen is apparently a kind of sweet pea so there's that.)
> 
> Savannah Charles is the woman I came up with for the night Shiro returned- she's supposed to be the woman Lance said 'who the heck is she' about way back in episode one. If she has an actual ID I haven't seen it so this her now. And her brother is the one Pidge was yelling with via Green forever ago.
> 
> Oh and I realized I kept using ‘instinct’ for the would-have-been Yellow Paladin forever back, but ‘intuition’ is a better word, I think, since they’re the most grounded Paladin. 
> 
> (Why yes I do like to pretend I’m funny.)
> 
> Also I don't know how clear it was then, but I do think the personalities of the Hecate I crew and the Paladins overlap a lot. I think Lance and Rebecca would get along swimmingly.
> 
> (I really, really like to pretend I'm funny.)
> 
> The next six chapters are in rough drafts and maybe 40% done and really kicking my ass right now, so that on top of home stuff plus the fact that I was sick for a week is putting some serious brakes on the next update. And I hate to admit it, it shouldn't have bothered me like this, but someone in my offline life kinda ripped the rug of writing confidence right out from under my feet, so I'm really just... yeah. I'm trying but it's a little hard right now. I've been second-guessing and rewriting everything a dozen times over so it's currently slow going. That's why it's been over two whole weeks and you're only getting like 2000ish words here.


	25. Proprioception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Proprioception: the ability to sense one’s own limbs and body in relation to one’s self

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all let me just say- holy shit you guys the words of support you all gave me made me cry in the very best way. I didn’t specify, but it was actually about fanfic that I was getting some shit. I felt really awful about ‘wasting my time and my skills’ writing this instead of my original ideas that have been gathering dust lately and I really appreciated everything you had to say. I really needed that. You guys are awesome.
> 
>  
> 
> I noticed nobody made any comments about the ‘shame not everyone understands the concept of a secret’ line. I kinda wanted to see if anyone would guess which Paladin’s family fucked up.
> 
> Also this chapter was mostly finished when I sat down to watch the new season so this and the next several and a lot of future plot points is all from before I learned anything new. And the thing with the Black Paladin bayard at the end of this season actually ties into my ideas around Zarkon, quintessence, and why he’s still alive and why he’s harvesting quintessence and it ties into the Lions and it’s wild. Seriously. Watching that bayard change from ‘corrupted’ back into its standard form in Shiro’s hands was just wild for me and I squee’d.
> 
> Fun fact, dunno if I’ve said before- the scenes I wrote where Pidge first meets Sanguivara and when Keith first meets Sanguivara were actually longer than what you saw, I just cut them off at points I thought were appropriately tense as fuck and saved the rest for later.
> 
> (Other fun thing- I didn’t remember Shiro’s wound from the end of Season 1 until like chapter 17. I kinda freaked out realizing I forgot about it.)
> 
> (Nother thing- I had a line where I mentioned Shiro picked up Pidge like a football and carried her a few chapters ago, and now all I can think of is “why are you carrying me” “you have little legs Pidge” and everyone heard and that’s all they called her for like two weeks. Little Legs Pidge. She may have thrown Lance’s bedding out the airlock at one point or another. There's no proof, of course, but they all know she did it.)

The Red and Green Paladins curl into a window seat, side by side and squished together awkwardly on the narrow bench, Pidge smushed up between the glass and the teenager beside her resting his chin on her head and looking out at the distant passing stars. She’s curled up with her laptop on her thighs and wrapped in her Altean nightgown, while he’s got one arm draped over her shoulders and Lance’s jacket loose over his frame. She’d offered him a sweatshirt, but he wasn’t feeling cold so much as he was simply missing the Blue Paladin, a feeling she can understand. A floating tray with half-empty cups hovers quietly nearby and they share a threadbare quilt that still smells faintly of an atmosphere that grows hazier in their memories with every passing day.

There’s nothing on this floor but staff-quarters, storage, a staff lounge space, and a few elevators that Pidge has yet to be able to hack into letting her into the cordoned off sections of the Castle. And of course, the best window seats they’ve found yet.

It’s the middle of the night-cycle, roughly two am, and they know the Alteans are asleep. The mice are probably asleep too, they tend to follow Allura’s rhythm, but they took no chances.

They chose this alcove as their meeting spot because there’s nowhere for the mice to hide and listen in- they know when the mice are around, and they know better than to imagine the mice would keep anything they heard to themselves. Apparently Galra ears are pretty sensitive. Or space mice are noisier than Earth mice. Or both.

A passing pat on the back earlier was enough to communicate that Pidge had managed to translate some of what she had recovered from Serva Nine four days ago, and that she wanted him to see it.

She’s translated a little more than she’ll share, though. On top of half the messages both outgoing and incoming, maybe a dozen prisoner files have translated completely so far, another dozen are in progress, and what she’s found has been… enlightening, in the worst way possible. Some of the data is corrupt and it makes her want to pull at her hair, but most of it is still legible so she stays her hands. She’ll have to figure out what flaw in her design caused the corruption later- she hates to blame her tech, but she’s never had this problem with Shiro’s arm.

She found data on a Galra woman, apparently a traitor to the empire, and her two young daughters, only children when they arrived… Pidge’s grateful her stomach was empty when she found it. None of them deserved what the Druid did to them.

Her fingers hover over the keyboard for several seconds before she feels a gentle mental nudge, and she exhales as she opens the document she’d read in her lab that had destroyed her appetite ten minutes before dinner. Her stomach grumbles lightly now, but she lets it be.

On the screen she sees information she wishes she had read before… So much of it is history, irrelevant, but if she had just waited, just read the last transmission, maybe none of this would have transpired. The very last outgoing message is blunt.

_Subject: Sanguivara- Druid_

_Status: Highly volatile, erratic, disobedient, selfish, manipulative._

_After suspected involvement in the death of Commander Karakal, the Druid is, in Commander Sendak’s opinion, no longer worth the expended resources to maintain. History and behavior pattern show the Druid is escalating and can no longer be controlled safely or in ways that make the expenditure worth the results, regardless of past and current research value. All of the Druid’s research data has been copied in secret. Awaiting orders._

_Suggestion: Termination_

_Suggested method: Starvation_

The last incoming message is even more blunt.

_Starvation of Sanguivara: Approved_

_Abandon subject at work station on Serva Nine and cut all losses. If subject takes prisoners, abandon prisoners. All remaining test subjects are to be considered expendable._

_Check progress of death in [_ a marker of time equal to roughly seven years _]._

“So, she was just… a coincidence?” Keith murmurs. Pidge can feel the vibrations of his throat against her head. “We only ran into her by chance?”

The smaller Paladin sighs. “Must have…”

He hums in understanding and she feels his head shift back toward the window. Confusion seems to be the emotion of the hour, simmering low in their bones as they try to ignore the lingering twinges of pain that have faded with every passing day- her side, her skull, his face, his left hand. There used to be more pain over more of their bodies, but these are the places that were hurt the worst, the most. They spend maybe thirty minutes like that, Keith watching the stars, Pidge quietly tapping her nails on her laptop and reviewing her blueprints for her latest droid project and her plans for devices Shiro would likely reject outright, when she suddenly takes a sharp breath in through her teeth. The Red Paladin grunts softly.

“What?”

She picks up his left hand and shows him the back of it. It takes him longer than he’d ever admit to realize what it is that she saw in the low blue light. At first he had thought delayed scar tissue… Which, well, wouldn’t _that_ be something to explain to the others later, the stories behind them…

“The color,” he murmurs, crooking his right arm awkwardly from its position draped around her to touch the back of his hand with his fingers. Pidge settles her chin on his forearm comfortably. He runs a finger reverently over his skin, noticing that his claws seem thinner, less prominent than they have. “It’s… almost gone.”

The blotches of dull purple that he’s grown familiar with in recent weeks are smaller, fainter in places, and when he tugs at the jacket sleeve some of the smallest patches of color around his wrist are gone entirely. He lets out a shaky breath as a strange lump settles in his throat.

“We need to keep track of this,” Pidge announces, already typing away a million miles a minute, mouth barely keeping up. “We know nothing about hybridized physiology, and so little from the textbooks on Galran physiology, and we still don’t know what applies to you at all, your condition may change again, and who knows why it even is now, and I highly doubt _that frothing endor_ had anything to do with it-”

His right hand presses over her mouth gently, reminding her to keep her voice down. She growls softly and he pulls away, shifting to sit across from her and still partly underneath the blanket.

“There’s a lot less purple than there was before,” she murmurs as she tilts her head. “And your ears look smaller. I would have almost expected more stress to make this more prominent, or more injury, or maybe this is a time related thing, _hell_ maybe it’s cyclical…”

He snorts. “Maybe it’s like lycanthropy. Maybe if I’m really lucky I’ll learn to control it at will.”

“That would be so _cool_ ,” she grins, pulling her legs to cross them underneath her laptop. She bounces softly, her smile goofy over her face. “You’d be a big purple space werewolf- one of my brothers is a _big purple space werewolf_.”

He rolls his eyes fondly and leans against the window, bumping the side of her leg with one bare foot as she keeps rambling.

“Or maybe werecat? I mean I suppose it really could go either way, with the ears and the teeth and all, though the claws aren’t really retractable but then again not all cats-”

“I do appreciate this, you know. The whole ‘ _acting like it’s no big deal_ ’ thing,” he interrupts as he tears his gaze away from the stars for a moment. “It helps. _A lot_.”

“You are hardly the weirdest thing we’ve dealt with over the past five, six months,” Pidge shrugs, tugging the sleeves of her nightgown back up from her wrists.

“True,” he huffs. “But still. Thanks. This has been hard to come to terms with. I really appreciate this.”

Pidge nods.

She can feel the tension radiating off him as he mulls his next words, slowly wrapping his arms around one leg. He rests his chin on his knee.

“How do you think the others… How do you think _Shiro_ will take it?”

She frowns. “He loves you, doesn’t he? You two have always acted like brothers, you’ve always been close. I imagine you’ve known him for a long time. I don’t know how he’ll react, but I can’t imagine it will be _that_ bad.”

She thinks for a moment, a dangerous smile tugging at one side of her mouth.

“And if he’s not ok with it, he will be.”

“That face will never be less terrifying,” the Red Paladin chuckles. “Don’t intimidate him into loving me, Pidge.”

“It’s not intimidation,” she puffs her chest out, one hand pressing back into her forehead dramatically and adopting a bad southern drawl. “Why, I’m insulted you would dare insinuate I would do anything so awful.”

Keith responds by kicking her thigh.

“Yeah I didn’t buy that either,” she snickers. “But I still won’t intimidate him. Probably. I make no promises about the leg boys though. _They_ are fair game.”

Keith snorts. “Leg boys?”

“Leg boys,” Pidge grins.

 

Forests can overgrow, and strangle themselves of nutrients. Fires can overburn, and suffocate themselves in much the same way. Both elements need balance, temperance, support.

So for the Green and Red Paladins, out of balance and separated from their three missing pieces, they need to unleash their growing distress before it destroys them from the inside out.

So in order to work out a _little_ of that energy they decide to spend a day plotting how to sneak around in the restricted parts of the Castle and break into every locked door.

It was that, or start throwing random shit out of the airlock. _For science_.

Or setting fires. Also _for science_.

Or setting random things on fire _and_ _then_ throwing them out of the airlock.

 _For science_.

(In Pidge’s case, anyway. Keith is honest about the fact that there’s no real reason for it beyond natural destructive tendencies and soul-crushing boredom.)

And they have already (temporarily) lost their unsupervised lighter and blowtorch privileges due to a _minor_ lab incident involving chewing gum and powdered potassium, so fire is automatically out.

For now…

Keith was working _very hard_ on spontaneous fire generation. Apparently it was harder than it looked. Red wasn’t exactly the most helpful of mentors on that front either. Thankfully the greenhouse is equipped with sprinklers and fire suppressors in case it stops being difficult and starts being a little too easy.

“ _Feel the fire_ \- what the hell does that mean…” he sighs through his nose, a thin flash of smoke escaping unnoticed as he pinches the bridge of it between his thumb and forefinger. He glances up at the Paladin casually opening and closing a flower blossom by opening and closing her fingers. If the sleepless bags under his eyes are anything like the ones on her face he must look absolutely dead on his feet, but neither of them could find it in themselves to rest. There’s an antsy undercurrent of energy they can’t explain down in their marrow that makes it impossible to sleep. “How do you do it?”

“Dunno,” she shrugs. She makes a gentle pushing gesture with her fingers and the flower leans back. “It’s not really scientific unfortunately. I just… want a thing to happen, and then when I move my hand the way it I want it to go, it kinda does. Sometimes. Sometimes it ignores me. It’s kinda hit or miss right now. But then I have something I can see. You’re working off something you can’t yet. That’s probably half the problem.”

Pidge purses her lips.

“Dad would love this,” she whispers, brows furrowed. “He always had a green thumb- _has_ , has a green thumb. Can’t cook for shit, but put him in a garden…”

The Red Paladin frowns, leaning over to squeeze her knee gently. “He will love it. You’ll find him. You’ll find them both.”

She shrugs weakly. “Maybe…”

“I know you will, Pidge, you’d tear the whole universe apart by hand if you had to-”

They realize what it is that’s causing the nervous frustration the moment before their Lions call to them, already springing to their feet as the revelation strikes.

**_CUB._ **

Both teenagers stiffen, glancing at each other before nodding in response to their Lions.

**_BLACK LION IS CLOSE. CALL FOR PRINCESS._ **

 

The Green Lion touches down on the sand of an alien world, half-submerged in the midnight water of the bay as the Red Lion lands on the cliff just above and her Paladin sprints out before her paws have fully settled on the stone. The alien sun rises in the distance and lights the tropical horizon up in a pastel blaze of colors as a familiar figure in black and white appears from the edge of the flame-colored jungle. The distant shape of the Castle of Lions settles into orbit above the planet.

Her helmet lands in the sand as she sprints to the Black Paladin, laughing and trying not to shout his name too loud as she lunges in for a hug. He stumbles back as she latches on to him, arms wrapped around his neck and legs dangling in the air.

She lets go a moment later, dropping back onto her feet and grinning up brightly as frantic feet skid in the sand behind her. Her first thought upon actually seeing his face crushes her enthusiasm. He… he does not look well.

The rough pink streak of his scar is the only color in the Black Paladin’s ashen face. No sweat clings to his skin as the others feel the first beads of moisture on their foreheads under the crushing heat and Pidge’s stomach sinks at the thought of heatstroke.

“Matt?” Shiro murmurs, grabbing the Green Paladin’s head carefully in his hand, glazed eyes staring more through her than at her as he pulls her closer. His mechanical right arm is in a sling improvised from his shirt and two fingers twitch but otherwise it does not move.

Allura squeezes Keith’s bicep as they stumble to a halt a few steps back and gestures toward Shiro- toward the wound on his side that had torn through the durable black underlayer of his armor, the wound oozing faintly with yellowish plasma where it isn’t crusted with not-quite dry blood.

“Haggar,” she whispers, “a Druid attacked him before the wormhole… I had forgotten. I think he’s hallucinating.”

“That seems reasonable,” the Red Paladin shudders as he stares at the scratches. They’re shallow, barely cutting the surface of his flesh, but thick, almost more like scrapes. They thrum with soft sickly mauve glow low under his skin with and thick veins of the color thread across his side, and though they don’t bleed they show no real signs of healing either. And they’ve been there for weeks…

What is it with Druids and nails anyway…

“Matt how did you get away?” His eyes flicker over her face, mouth opening and closing silently as he searches for words. “How…?”

“I’m not _Matt_ ,” Pidge whispers as she struggles to keep her voice level, leaning her cheek against his hand. She feels a dizziness that isn’t her own through the contact and her legs shake and her eyes unfocus against her will. “Shiro don’t you recognize me?”

His brows furrow. Keith turns to Allura, his voice low and frantic.

“Allura, how do you shapeshift?”

She rounds on him with wide eyes. “What?”

“How do you change colors? What do you do?” He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “He won’t recognize me like this, he- he might… _How do I change it_?”

“I, uh,” she stammers, blinking rapidly. “I just, I feel. I just feel myself grow taller, I just want myself to turn purple, I just… it’s hard to describe something like this, I’m so sorry. I should know how to explain it…”

“No, Allura,” Keith smiles weakly, “that helps. That really helps.”

“ _Can_ you even change it?”

“Maybe,” he shrugs, biting his lower lip and curling his hands into fists, feeling the fire of his Lion wrap over him and flood him with confidence and love. He closes his eyes to her raspy mental purr and starts to feel, to want, deep down in his very being, demanding his body change. “It’s been changing on its own but I guess we’ll find in a tick, won’t we?”

It’s only a moment before Allura grabs his arm in a bruising grip, shaking her head frantically. “No, no Keith stop, stop. That’s not less purple, that’s _more_ purple.”

“ _Shit_.”

“It’s not the wounds,” Pidge gasps, her eyes locked on a broken shell of fruit in the sand. She breaks away from Shiro and scoops up a piece of it and turns it over, listening to her new instincts- the hollow hard blue shell is bleached from the sunshine, and the pale pink hairs are stiff and dry, and when she sniffs it carefully she catches the remnants of a pungent odor that makes her recoil. She grimaces as she turns around, displaying the fruit in her hands. “Don’t ask me how I know this, but these are making him sick. Something in the meat of this fruit has hallucinogenic properties in humans.”

“The water’s safe though, Matt,” he murmurs. “I don’t eat the meat.”

Pidge bites her tongue and nods, giving the Paladin a tightly pinched smile.

“But the water inside still absorbed the hallucinogen,” she says, tilting her head carefully. “It still made you sick Shiro. Can you walk with me?”

“I think so.”

Allura steps in to catch the Black Paladin when he leans too heavily against Pidge and nearly sends her stumbling.

“I’ve got you Shiro.”

His eyes focus for just a moment- “Princess?”

“At least he knows one of us,” Keith murmurs dryly, glancing over toward the slender streak of red metal rising from the water. Pidge punches his arm gently. He huffs and hits her bicep back in tired response, watching with folded arms as Allura guides Shiro to the open mouth of the Green Lion.

“He’s just a little sick, Keith,” Pidge shrugs, stepping out across the sugary white sand slowly over to a lean-to, gathering the scattered pieces of armor and shaking the sand off them. She says it for his benefit as much as her own. “It’ll be fine.”

He shakes his head and turns to Red, smiling wryly when she tilts her head and rumbles out loud at him. He nods and joins Pidge in gathering the scattered armor. “I hope you’re right.”

“Aren’t I usually?”

 

“Hang on to something.”

Allura braces herself and the barely-conscious Shiro as Pidge digs in, burying her Lion’s claws in the silt of the lagoon as she shoves her shoulder and her shield up against the Black Lion, pushing into her as Keith does the same through Red. Their Lion’s tails thrash with effort as they slowly shove upwards, the sound of groaning metal and rushing water roaring through their Lion’s ears. She exhales slowly, pushing harder, feeling through her Lion as her great paws are sucked down by wet sand and her jets flare as she forces them free.

The Black Lion rises from the saltwater as the Red and Green support her, and she’s maneuvered back into her waiting bay as carefully as the two of them can manage.

The younger Paladins spend the better part of the day underwater, gathering the lost parts of the Black Lion and searching for Shiro’s missing helmet.

Red carries back the Black Lion’s missing wing in her jaws, miles away where it had been torn off by a mountainous island- the other was badly broken at the shoulder to stick up out of the water the way it had, and Pidge and Green had had to twist it violently to get it to lay low enough to fit through the tower opening. It was only because three Lions were maneuvering into the bay rather than one, and a flash of guilt flushed through the connection of the Paladin and her Lion as the metal groaned under Green’s teeth.

The undamaged Lions bask in natural sunlight while their Paladins swim through the inky water of the bay, searching for a few crystals and a helmet. They’re lucky that was really all that was lost. Some chunks of car-sized metal had been recovered with the Black Lion’s wing.

There are some tiny metal shards, but Black wouldn’t need all of them to repair herself- all the Lions apparently have a very modest regeneration ability- some strange blend of quintessence and nanites not unlike the ones the pods used on organic lifeforms, but rather than reacting in cold air they react to strong and direct ultraviolet light. Thus, the sun lamps.

They listen with baited breath as Coran surveys the wounded Paladin, talking into a speaker for their benefit as he finishes up.

“ _Soaking in that saltwater likely kept most of the toxin from getting into his system. That, plus staying hydrated probably helped stave off the worst effects of whatever poison the Druid tried to use on him. He shouldn’t even need a pod. Just a few days of bed rest and lots of fluids_.”

“That’s good to hear,” Keith sighs, swimming under a particularly large and ugly looking fish, dragging his light across the bottom of the sand.

“ _Are the two of you nearly finished_?”

“Almost,” Pidge grunts, dragging a long white crystal the width of her torso along the bottom of the seafloor. “Just found the last crystal, bringing it back to Green now. You find that helmet Keith?”

“No, not yet,” he glances around, pushing down off a large tower of copper colored coral until his hands brush the sand- water is hardly his element, figuratively or literally, and he feels a coil of nervous tension in his stomach as he swims further down. He’s never been in water deeper than a public pool and this is incredibly unnerving. He’s not sure how Pidge can tolerate it. He pushes along the floor and kicks out little clouds of sand and silt behind him. A flash of white in the corner of his left eye sends him whirling and relief floods his veins. “ _There it is_. Alright, I’ll be up in a tick.”

Something freakishly spider-like with two pairs of lobster-like claws lunges halfway out and snaps at the Red Paladin when he approaches. He tries to shoo the animal off and it snaps violently at his fingers, retreating back into the helmet it’s claimed for itself.

“ _Bitch_ …”

Pidge snorts in his ear. “You rang?”

“Alien crustacean seems to have claimed Shiro’s helmet,” Keith leans back, folding his arms. The animal waves whiskery facial appendages rudely at him and he glowers. “It’s very territorial.”

“… And?”

“I’m figuring it out, hang on.”

“You think we can eat it?”

“I wouldn’t want to,” the Red Paladin grimaces. “It’s pretty ugly.”

“Bring it back to the Castle and stick it in Lance’s room. He can keep it as a pet. He'd like that.”

Keith rolls his eyes, glad she can’t see the smile on his face.

“You just want it to attack him.”

“Oh, wow,” her voice is bone dry and he can almost feel her rolling her eyes, “you figured me out. I was _so_ careful. How ever did you guess.”

“I thought you _missed_ him.”

“I miss making his life a living hell.”

“Nice…”

“Aren’t I though?”

He coughs. “Pidge you are the human version of a cactus.”

“Aww,” she sniffles dramatically, and he can hear the cheeky grin in her voice, “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I _am_ a prickly bitch aren’t I?”

Keith just covers his face in his hands as a few pale pink fish swim by. The alien crustacean retreats even deeper into Shiro’s helmet, snapping its claws threateningly. Red rumbles in the back of his brain with laughter.

“ _Why me_?”

 

The watercolor purple is wider-spread over the Red Paladin’s flesh, richer in color now. His ears have even taken on a soft tuft of fur on the tops, and when he turns his head just so and his eyes catch the light there’s a golden flash that makes him freeze when he sees it in the mirror. It’s eerily reminiscent of the eyes of a wild animal through a night vision camera like he used to see in old wildlife documentaries.

It’s such a small detail, but it’s a long way away from human.

It scares him a little.

He tries not to let it.

It doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.

If anything it fascinates Coran and Pidge, and they’re eager to document every little detail about it. He lets their enthusiasm push away the discomfort.

 

Pidge and Keith are quick to learn that Coran is unbeatable in card games. He takes to new card games like a fish to water- or, like ‘a Narusi hexapedle to crawling on the sheer cliff-faces of Geru Twelve’, as he puts it.

Sometimes they wonder if he’s just messing with them when he says things like that…

It’s a very good thing they don’t have money to bet because they would both be penniless and in colossal debt to the exceptionally amused Altean only just now finishing his first game of Blackjack. Go Fish had been an absolute slaughter, and nothing else they could come up with had even given them a fighting chance.

“Another round, Paladins?”

They exchange looks for a moment, debating whether or not it’s worth being utterly obliterated in a card game again. It doesn’t matter what game they choose, he picks it up immediately, and they haven’t found a game he can’t master yet.

It’s a strange combination of impressive and unnerving, really.

He huffs lightly at their hesitation, adjusting his lapels as he rises from the couch. “I believe it’s time for me to start preparing dinner, though I do expect we’ll play again soon.”

“Sure, Coran,” Keith nods as Pidge gathers up the cards and grumbles quietly. “Sounds great.”

Pidge waits until the Altean is out of earshot- “I’m calling it now, that’s black magic. _That kind of shit is not possible_.”

Keith shakes his head, biting his lip in a failed bid to subdue a smile.

“Someone’s a sore loser.”

Pidge socks him in the bicep, glowering when he doesn’t even so much as blink at the impact. He glances around and scratches lightly at his chin.

“Was that a mosquito?”

 _If looks could kill_ …

 

The Black Paladin rouses when the door opens and Allura quietly pushes his shoulder back when he tries to get out the bed. A few mice chirp and shift in the space beside him. His eyes are clear and his skin has some color back, and overall he looks to be in far better shape than he was this morning. The first words out of Shiro’s mouth make Allura sputter and slap a hand over her own mouth- “When did Coran get a beard?”

Coran glances down, running one hand over his own chin, fingers brushing through short brilliant orange hair. “It has been a while since I shaved, hasn’t it? I suppose it has fallen to the wayside for a while now.”

The Princess snickers softly and shifts, brushing the shaggier length of Shiro’s hair from his face. It’s grown out a bit since the last time he had the chance to cut it, and the dark scruff on his own face is slowly coming in.

“Was that… was that Keith? In the Red Paladin armor?”

Allura blinks, turning toward Shiro. He doesn’t repeat himself but he inclines his head slightly and she knows he expects an answer. Of course he’d just get right to the point. Of course he would have noticed.

“It was.”

“He looked…” Different. _Purple_. But then Shiro wasn’t totally in his own head at the moment… He’s still figuring out his own head now. The steady jackhammering in his brain is making everything a little hazy and he’s not totally sure his legs will support him if he tries to get up.

Allura sighs, glancing away. _He’ll find out soon enough either way_. “He’s part Galra. It wasn’t a secret he was keeping from anyone- apparently he didn’t even know until his body changed recently.”

“Why did it?”

“Most likely?” Coran frowns as he continues to rub at his facial hair. “Severe physical trauma forced his body to react defensively. This isn’t entirely unusual, for a hybrid to have a single-species appearance until they are put under great duress. Galra muscle, Galra organs are durable, and his were mangled when the wormhole was corrupted and his damaged Lion torn open. His mottled transformation was a survival mechanism. His body called on his latent Galra blood to keep him alive.”

Shiro’s face takes on a nauseated tinge and he nods, glancing at the tray in the older Altean’s hands.

“You really don’t sugarcoat things, do you?”

“Not if it can be helped,” Coran shrugs as he sets the tray down on one side of the bed. He pours from a small kettle and a rich royal blue tea streams down into a mug, steaming and filling the air with a heavy herbal smell. “There was a little piece of metal lodged up near the joint of your mechanical arm. It was locking up the limb. I took it out earlier and everything seems to be fine again, but you should probably go through a few exercises once you’re better just to make sure there aren’t any more pieces.”

Shiro takes the cup in his hands slowly and nods. “Thank you.”

 

It catches the younger Paladins off-guard when Shiro joins them for dinner two days later- one minute they’re whisper-discussing battle tactics against Coran for any future card games and the next Shiro is settling in beside Keith, rolling his eyes and laughing as if he’d never been gone at all.

Keith forgets how to breathe and Pidge is pretty sure her heart stops dead in her chest for a few ticks.

It’s only after Shiro smiles and claps Keith on the shoulder, asking how he’s been, that either of them breathe a sigh of relief. Things haven’t changed as much as they had feared. Things are alright.

It doesn’t stay that way for long. The longer dinner goes on the more they slowly notice the way his smile doesn’t always quite reach his eyes, the way his shoulders always tense just a little if the Red Paladin moves too quickly (he’s the Guardian Aspect of Fire, he _always_ moves too quickly, it’s in his nature), the way he keeps a distance that with anyone else would be perfectly polite but for Keith, for a brother it’s downright chilly. Pidge tries to play it off but Keith sees it for what it is- Shiro, whether he realizes it or not, is afraid of him. And if it’s not fear, at the very least he’s uncomfortable around him.

The Black Paladin flinches and he flinches _hard_ when Keith yawns at one point, showing a mouthful of much sharper teeth than he had the last time Shiro saw him. Pidge chooses that moment and intervenes, insisting she’s done eating and has a project she needs Keith’s input on _now_ and _in my lab across the Castle_ and could you possibly move any slower you _oversized Farusian slugbear_ \- that gets a laugh out of both of them, weak as it is. Coran catches on and asks Shiro to help him with the dishes.

Everyone takes the outs they’re given without hesitation.

“It’s alright,” the Altean sighs as he puts the last of the cups away. “You’ll get there.”

Shiro sighs quietly, glancing back out at the table. Allura leaves a data pad at her seat and rubs tiredly at her eyes as she wanders out the doors. She’d been distracted all night and had barely said a word all night and the Black Paladin can’t help but wonder if she’s feeling alright.

“I shouldn’t have to though. I’ve known him forever.”

“Would it be easier if he didn’t look different?”

The Black Paladin folds his arms, leaning back against the counter. “Honestly? It probably would… I _know_ it would, actually, and I hate that. But I can’t avoid him, and I can’t treat him differently. I just have to accept this.”

“Good man,” Coran smiles, patting Shiro’s shoulder supportively.

 

The Black Lion is sprawled out, its- _her_ head resting on one paw. Her great metal body lays limp near her chamber and the gaping tear along her side is a little smaller than it was when she arrived a few days ago. The sunlamps are dimmed rather than put out entirely for the night-cycle and the low light is oddly reminiscent of a sunset on Altea, reminding the Princess faintly of arid southern mountains and cloudless skies, the long shadows cast by the mangled Lion adding a strange weight to the early darkness.

Allura settles herself at the Black Lion’s claws, running one hand against the cool silver metal in steady, gentle motions, humming quietly to herself.

Her bond, that tenuous, delicate thing that she had only just started to form with this Lion ten thousand years ago, is gone. Like a braid of Tendarian silk under scissors. It never stood a chance.

It’s been replaced by something different. Artificial. Stronger, colder, like steel cords.

She’s been bound to each of the Lions through means she only now realizes have quite likely been lost and forgotten to history. She presses her hand underneath her bust, against the scar both fresh and ancient that she has become painfully familiar in the months since she has woken from her extended slumber, and she feels it throb delicately under the fabric of her dress, warm and tense on the surface of her skin.

The highest point of the star is the warmest now, the pain is sharpest there, and she huffs sadly as she turns to look at the resting Lion.

To know the Lions… that they live, that they feel…

It’s strange.

Not unpleasant, just _strange_. Like reading her mother’s personal journals (an act she still can’t bring herself to do) it feels like knowledge she should not possess- at least not now, not here, not in this way.

This is quite likely the closest she will ever get to experiencing what her father had described, what her uncles and… and her _mentor_ had described. She knows that the Black Lion is calling to her, and she can feel a faint sorrow bubbling up under her scar she knows is not her own, guilt and apology and love and so many emotions she doesn’t have the energy to name all asking in turn for her attention, for her forgiveness.

“You could not have prevented this,” Allura sighs into the darkness as she leans her cheek against the claw. “This was what had to be done. There was nothing _you_ could have done. You needed this; you needed _me_.”

The apology stings in her chest again and she smacks at the giant claw ineffectively.

“Don’t you start now,” she sniffles, a tiny laugh in her voice. “Don’t you start. Let me finish. I had a whole speech I’ve been planning for you.”

The emotions turn softer, gentler, and the stinging in her scar turns into a low pulsing thrum, almost like a purr. Allura clings to it and she holds it deep in her chest.

“This was what had to be done, the fallback that had to be accounted for. You needed a bound royal. You needed my energy- my quintessence, that reinvigoration. You needed that security too, if anything happened to one of the Paladins back then and you were all needed. _You all needed me_.” She sighs under the weight of a responsibility she never asked for, losses she can never take back… “It is an honor to serve the Lions. It is an honor my mother bore with grace, and one I will bear to the best of my abilities. You know I will always miss what could have been ours, but I will still embrace what is mine now. And even like this I could have still served as your Apprentice for a time, flown and fought with you as I had before.”

Before another candidate, before other Apprentices were found. She still can, actually, if anything were to happen to her current Black Paladin… Or to any other Paladin…

And, she realizes, her Apprentice bond had to be broken. She was the only remaining member of her Apprentice group, and having her remain tethered to the Black Lion meant that finding other Paladins would be harder. It could be done, it had before, in times of great crisis, but… groups were all picked together for a reason. Paladins needed to _resonate_ with each other…

(And her _manifest_ _bayard_ … She shudders every time she remembers it. Allura has never been one for superstition, but… this truly was for the best.)

The bond had to be cut, and the quintessence of a truly powerful individual bound to the Lions was needed, so, as the old adage went, with the throw of one greatspear two yelmoors were felled.

“This may not be the way I expected to know you,” she sighs, leaning heavily against the metal, “but I will not complain, not when I still get you feel you, to feel all of you. I will always be of the Black Lion, I will always be yours, and you mine, nobody can take away that history… And now I can be of all of you. I can be Starbound.”

 

Allura wakes up a few brief hours later with a soft start, blinking in surprise as she takes in her surroundings.

She’s curled up against the claws of the Black Lion and covered in blankets. Pillows that weren’t there before are tucked behind her head, and when she looks down she sees two of her Paladins curled protectively around her, still deep in their own sleep. She scratches their heads gently and rolls her eyes as she looks back up at the Lion above them.

“I suppose you told the others and had them send these two here?”

There’s a flutter of humor in the peak of her scar and she figures that’s as good as a ‘yes’ as she’s ever going to get.

It’s sincerely strange to know that the Black Lion is… that it, that _she_ is alive. She’d always thought Kharine facetious when he discussed the personality of his Lion, but if the Black Lion lives, surely she too must have a personality of her own. She’ll have to ask Shiro…

She lays back and lets herself savor the moment before noticing a soft, low rumbling sound…

She blinks and glances between her Paladins, trying to figure out where the noise is emanating from, only to realize with a snort that both of them are purring warmly as they cuddle up to her in their sleep. She reaches out to the Black Lion and nudges her gently.

 

The smile that stretches over Shiro’s face as he stifles a yawn practically glows in the dim light.

It makes Allura feel a little better to see Shiro so content. She knows how he’s tried to adapt to the changes and the truth of Keith’s heritage, she saw him gearing himself up before dinner, but she can also see as well as anyone else that it’s something he’s having a hard time grappling with, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the teenager himself. So when he gives the sleeping Red Paladin a sincere and warm smile Allura takes a small amount of comfort knowing that they are making progress, even if it’s not _quite_ as fast as she would like.

“They’re holding hands,” he chuckles, and Allura looks down to see that he’s right. Pidge and Keith are wrapped protectively around her, and they’re holding hands across her in their sleep. Tablets they must have been using earlier before they dozed off are squished between them and the Princess.

A stab of pain flits over her features and his expression drops.

“There’s a _bad_ reason for that, isn’t there?”

“Unfortunately,” the Princess muses quietly, running her hands gently through their mussed hair. “I know they haven’t mentioned it to you, but they don’t like being alone if they can help it after something that happened recently, and they don’t like sleeping alone either.” She shudders, mincing no words. “A terrible encounter with a Druid, I’m afraid.”

 _Understating, thy name is Allura_.

“Not too long ago we set down to resupply- we’d lost some water, and they took off without so much as a note to what turned out to be an abandoned Serva station hidden on that planet.” She bites her lip, tilting her head as she looks over at Shiro settling down on her right, next to the still-sleeping Pidge. “They ran into the Druid while they were there… Apparently she was marooned…”

Shiro glances at the teenagers again with a frown that ages him heavily. “Have they talked about it?”

“Not with me.” She doesn’t mention that she’s had the mice rotate in shifts, following the Paladins in case they discuss it by themselves. She glances up hopefully. “But maybe they’ll share with you.”

Keith grunts softly and buries his face in the Princess’ side, mumbling in his sleep. Pidge squeezes his hand and stretches her legs out and points her toes as she turns to hide more of her face in the pillow with a low groan.

“They’re handling it on their own, or so they tell me, but I can’t help but worry. Whatever it is, whatever she did to them… They were covered in blood, Shiro. _Red_ blood. Galrans don’t bleed red. The only species I know who do are Dlaarians… and Humans.”

Allura answers the question before Shiro can think to ask it, brushing a few tendrils of long black hair behind Keith’s ear. It flicks for a moment at the contact and Shiro lets himself stare.

“He bleeds red. His human side is stronger than it looks. And he might very well be able to look fully human again- he’s been trying to control his apparently fluid appearance ever since we found you.” She huffs. “It’s a task far easier said than done, apparently.”

Shiro doesn’t grace that with a response. He doesn’t know how. But he does feel a coil of something not quite guilt low in his throat as he glances over at the Red Paladin’s sleeping face.

He volunteers to take Pidge back to her room- then he offers to take Keith, almost stumbling over his own tongue, but Allura shakes her head and scoops up the quietly rumbling Paladin with an understanding smile painted over her features. Distracted though she may have been she still saw him at dinner. She won’t push him.

Shiro nods as he scoops up the Green Paladin. He almost wishes that she would.

 

Shiro tucks the Green Paladin in with a tired sigh, smoothing the long messy bangs from her furrowed face as she slowly melts back into her own bed. He can’t help but huff with amusement as her features smooth and soften- when she’s asleep she almost looks _tame_. He shakes his head at the thought. Neither of the young Paladins who serve as an arm of Voltron are tame, and they never have been. He’d be broken-hearted if they ever were. Her bedroom door slides shut behind him and he massages a sore shoulder slowly. He’s glad to have his mechanical arm functioning again but the strain it left in his muscles when it locked up is likely going to linger for a while. Hopefully Allura will go easy on him during training tomorrow.

He almost doesn’t hear it. He almost doesn’t hear the soft, pained mewling through the door, and he almost walks back to his own room. But his ears pick up the sound and he freezes before he can walk away.

Her door can’t open again fast enough.

Her teeth are bared in a snarl and she’s curled tightly in on herself, whimpering into her sheets. Shiro lands on one knee on the edge of her bed, his right hand squeezing her shoulder gently as he calls to her- it’s maybe not the best way to handle someone in a nightmare, especially if what he is imagining is accurate, but he also knows that if she lashes out he can handle her. She doesn’t react to her name, to Pidge or to Katie, and he uses his left hand to brush at her face again, calling to her in a low voice.

Big mistake.

The moment his skin touches hers the air is ripped from his lungs and he sees exactly what it is that she’s experiencing.

Or… as something not quite Shiro realizes in the back of his mind, in that space between man and Lion, what she _experienced_.

 

“You should take comfort knowing your corpse will be a  _wonderful_ help to us. Fret not,” the voice in the darkness croons, suddenly hot and heavy against the back of her neck, a delicate tapping running up her fear-rigid spine, “ _we’ll keep it warm for you_.”

She whips around, aiming to take the Druid’s head clean off with her blade only to roar in fear and frustration as the not-quite-smoke burns in her eyes and the Druid vanishes again in the darkness.

There’s a slight twist in the shadow to her right and her bayard transforms as she whirls on the dense darkness- the shadow dissipates in a puff and a low, ominous hiss when her blade rockets through it and sinks into the wall behind with a rough _thunk_. The heavy shadow curls around and away from the glowing cord as it flees. The Druid’s voice purrs through the air, disembodied and snaking around her in every direction.

“I do admire your tenacity, even if you clearly over-estimate your own capabilities. I must ask, while I still have you breathing- is this a Terran trait or a Paladin trait?”

“It’s an unfortunate human flaw- _now step into the light_ ,” Pidge barks, body bristling as she retracts her blade, holding it close to her chest as she backs away, one foot inching behind the other carefully. “Face me you coward!”

The Druid hems and haws mockingly from somewhere above her and Pidge whips her head up to scan the balconies for her shape. “I don’t think I will…”

“ _Endor_.”

She could swear the temperature in the room drops twenty degrees right there.

“… _What did you call me_?”

Pidge sneers, tilting her head toward the sound even when she knows, even as her lights find nothing. The reality of some random nonsense word from her homeworld being a high insult would be hilarious were it not for the fact that she’s currently terrified for her own life, regretting the biggest mistake she has ever made as she scrambles to _think_ her way out of this mess. Her helmet doesn’t seem to be working, she keeps reaching out for a connection and hearing nothing, so calling for backup is not an option. Not that she really wants to drag anyone else into this nightmare. She just needs to use that big brain of hers like she always does. Her feet slide slowly, ever so slowly back toward the doorway she came through as she scans nervously for the Druid.

“I said ‘ _endor’_ , unless those big ugly ears of yours are just for show,” she snarls. She’s really going to have to ask for a definition for that word later. Something crunches under her boot and Pidge bites her tongue hard enough that she whimpers in a bid to stave off the nausea- she can’t look down, she won’t.

Sanguivara manifests suddenly in the light cast by the Paladin’s helmet, glowing golden eyes narrowed dangerously. She may be much smaller than the Galra Pidge is used to running across, but she’s still standing an easy head and a half above the teenager, and she towers threateningly over the Green Paladin as she looms only a few short yards away in the center of the room.

“I _was_ having fun,” she hisses, raising one delicate hand to settle against her chin. Wet blood shines on the tips of her claws, the red shocking in the light. “But then if _this_ is how you’re going to treat me, let’s just get this over with.”

“What are you going to do?” Pidge mocks, bracing herself and baring her teeth. “Scratch me to death?”

The Druid hums, a cold smile painted over her curling mouth. She brings her talons to her lips and licks the red droplets off slowly, glancing off and away. A thin streak of blood smears down along her lower lip and she pulls it into her mouth. “ _Oh no, no no no…_ _I won’t be doing anything_ …”

Pidge hesitates and her shoulders drop slightly.

“You’ll be the one doing all the work… In fact, I dare say you already _want_ to,” she croons, extending her arm and twisting her hand palm-up. Her fingers curl delicately and she flexes two digits toward herself. The Paladin’s muscles go rigid. The Druid’s eyes are wide with almost childish delight as she leans forward. “I won’t have to do anything but _ask_ …”

Pidge can feel her arm twisting slowly up toward her chest and she fights, struggling against her own impulses, her own body as the glowing light of her blade inches closer to her vision. She tenses her muscles as hard as she can and it halts her hand, she can see her bayard hovering near her chin, her fingers gripping it so roughly that her digits are throbbing, and a frantic animal terror floods her senses and overwhelms her as she _realizes_ …

“You’re a stubborn thing, I’ll give you that,” Sanguivara giggles. “This will be _a lot_ more fun… Let’s see what secrets you so-called ‘humans’ hide, shall we?”

Her lungs blaze behind her ribs and suddenly the dream (the nightmare, the memory) starts to blur, a blinding flash of green light and white ash flooding the vision, veiling it… It distorts everything, rushes everything. Shiro can barely make out flecks of movement and color (green, violet, red, so much red) in it as everything collapses around him.

He can smell burning meat, he can hear screaming and smoke clogs his lungs as an unbearable heat burns all around him before suddenly everything… stops.

Shiro sinks back with a shaking intake of breath, forcing himself to focus on the moment at hand as the Green Paladin starts to rouse and reach for the nearest source of warmth. He shifts to sit beside her and she latches onto him, burying her face in his chest, mumbling through the sniffles as a wave of confusion and surprise washes over him. “Keith?”

Shiro’s eyebrows nearly shoot through his forehead and off his face. He shakes his head, resting his flesh and blood hand in her hair with a strained smile; “Afraid not, kiddo.”

Pidge sniffles again and he can feel her smiling into his chest as her voice gathers a little more clarity. “I should have known. His man boobs are nowhere near this big.”

He laughs silently, the motion jostling the other Paladin. It’s a little easier to breathe now that she’s awake, now that there’s space between him and that… that nightmare. She gives him a soft full body squeeze and he can feel why- she wants to make sure that he is _real_. He scratches her head.

“You doing ok?”

He already knows the answer.

“No,” she sighs, turning so that she’s resting one cheek on his chest. He can already feel the emotional… he wouldn’t call it a wall, she’s not blocking him out entirely, it’s maybe more like a fence, he can feel the emotional fence rising between them as she guards herself, like she used to do during mental exercises, but he can’t find it in himself to blame her for hiding right now. Her honey-hazel eyes glance up in the darkness and turn bitterly serious. “And I don’t want to talk about it either.”

Shiro blinks.

“I heard you talking to Allura. Keith and I are handling this on our-” she rockets out of bed like she’s just been electrocuted and scrambles for the door.  

 

Shiro very nearly trips over Pidge as she hesitates in the doorway of the Red Paladin’s new suite. Keith is curled up in a knot of tense muscles and deathly silent, painfully shallow breathing on the bed. He looks ready to spring at any moment- but to run or to fight it’s impossible to tell. He doesn’t react when the Green Paladin calls his name, and she pads over on bare feet slowly.

She crouches by the bed and holds his wrists in her hands, kneeling down until her face is nearly brushing against his blanched knuckles. Shiro fights down the instinctive desire to tell her to be careful- she knows what she’s doing. She has to, she certainly acts like she knows what she’s doing. But even then… the sight of claws, Galra claws, so close to her face makes his knees numb. Her eyes glaze with something only she can see and she squeezes his hands gently.

“Hey, I’m here, I’m here,” she murmurs, her voice like a steady pulse. The Red Paladin starts to relax, tense muscles unwinding with a low exhale. “I’m here. She didn’t win. I’m still here. We’re both still here.”

His eyes blink open slowly. “Pidge?”

“In the flesh,” she nods. He wraps his arms around her and drags her into the bed, flipping her over so that she’s in the middle of the space, and he tucks his chin against the crown of her head with a tired sigh. She grunts softly. “You too huh?”

“Yeah.”

Pidge twists her head to look at Shiro still by the door, gesturing to him with one hand. “You don’t have to just stand there, you know.”

Keith freezes.

“Paladin bonding moment or not I feel like I should almost be a little concerned by this level of intimacy,” Shiro jokes awkwardly, stepping toward the far side of the bed when Pidge waves at him again, her gesture growing more insistent. “I’m pretty sure Commander Holt would kill me if I let Pidge get knocked up.”

The two younger Paladins crinkle their noses at the same time and mumble a soft ‘ew’, affronted by the very insinuation.

“Besides, you don’t _let_ me do anything anyway,” the Green Paladin grins at him. “You just can’t _stop_ me. And we both know it’s my mom you should be afraid of.”

“That’s not a comforting thing to say, Pidge,” Keith sighs into her hair. “That is the exact opposite of comforting.”

She glances up. “It’s true though.”

“Remind me to cut off the genitals of every alien who so much as looks at you funny,” the Red Paladin grumbles, rolling his eyes. The light catches in his irises for a moment and there’s an animalistic glow that goes quietly unacknowledged by the Paladin that sees it.

Shiro snickers softly. “We’ll make it a rule- any alien that looks at Pidge funny loses its respective genitals. I’m sure it won’t be too hard to get the others to sign on. Hell, you and Lance will probably make a _contest_ of it.” Keith hums positively as if he’s considering the idea.

Pidge sighs at the weird overprotective dialogue and scoots over to the far side until she can reach the Black Paladin and she grabs him by the hand, dragging him down into the bed.

“I want brother cuddles, come on.”

“Don’t bother, Shiro,” Keith snorts when the older Paladin hesitates. “She’s not letting you go anywhere now. Might as well accept it.”

“Don’t act like you’re not a cuddler yourself,” Shiro quirks one brow as he leans back into the pillows beside them. He doesn’t lay quite close enough to touch Pidge but he’s close enough that she’s not reaching over and pulling him any closer, curling up again with her spine brushing his metal arm as she settles in.

“I don’t know what you mean,” the Red Paladin sniffs.

“He’s a body-heat parasite,” Shiro stage-whispers. “He’ll cuddle you to death if it gets below sixty-five degrees.”

“I’m a living furnace now,” Keith rolls his eyes. “You’re safe from heat-leeching cuddles. If anything, the roles have reversed.”

“He is _ridiculously_ warm,” Pidge mumbles, tucking her head under his chin and ignoring the very idea of personal space, proving Keith right at the same time. She squeaks out a yawn and her voice softens, growing fainter with every word. “Red’s powers are awesome. Wonder what Black’s are.”

There are a few moments of silence before Keith mumbles, so quietly Shiro almost doesn’t catch it- “ _I guess this is my life now_.” Shiro bites his lip to keep from laughing.

 

“Why did she let me call her Matt?”

Keith tilts his head, surprised to hear Shiro’s voice. The Black Paladin sighs at the girl sound asleep between them, not turning as he murmurs the question again.

“Why did she let me call her Matt?”

“You were out of it, Shiro,” he sighs into the dark and glances down at the dozing Paladin. “She probably figured it was the path of least resistance.”

There’s a soft grunt of acknowledgement.

“How’re you?”

“M’fine.”

Shiro’s head turns and Keith looks away when he whispers. “Really?”

“I’m as fine as I can be right now, all things considered. This has been a pretty intense past couple of weeks. Things haven’t been the easiest, but I’m trying.”

Shiro nods and shifts onto his side, propping the side of his head on his hand. “And if you stop feeling fine, you know you can always come to me.”

“I know. I will.” He pauses. “I promise.”

Shiro smiles softly and his mechanical hand rests on Keith’s hair in a familiar brotherly ruffle. The Red Paladin closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “That’s all I ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Platonic bed sharing and snuggles are my shit. That is like my favorite thing in the world, in fic and in real life. I fucking love it. That and scritches. I will lay on you like an actual cat if you scratch me I have no shame.
> 
> Fun fact: I actually consider this story to be Falling Stars. I wish I had come up with the name when I was getting ready to post it but alas it wasn’t until posting Morningstar that I came up with ‘Falling Stars’. So I made that the collection title, but I don’t plan on changing the name of this fic. Plus, the title of this fic actually has a meaning that I will reveal at some point. It’s not just words slapped together.
> 
> So whenever I *finally* get my tablet (long story) and start posting art on my sideblog I’ll tag the stuff for this ‘fallingstarsvld’.
> 
> Another totally useless note, I briefly entertained the idea of Pidge and Keith running into Sanguivara after they picked up Shiro; he’d be on the Castle ready to reprimand them when they arrived covered in their own blood and ash, and he’d hear Coran’s (thankfully not totally accurate, but surprisingly close) initial thoughts as to what happened down there. Ultimately I didn’t want Shiro to hear that, to have that hanging over his head with his interactions with the two of them, especially with Keith right now, so Sanguivara came first. Shiro’s got enough shit going for him, he don’t need that.
> 
> Besides, he just got to see a little more of what Pidge went through before she missed her check-in. So there’s that.
> 
> And I realize I didn’t explain it, but the volume of blood they lost could not have been recouped in that short amount of time on its own. I imagine the healing pods work with these organic nanites that expedite recovery and they go in through wounds and through respiratory orifices, bringing the body up to stable as fast as possible without overloading the cells.
> 
> Also, Druids. I imagine Druids are a little like vampires in that it takes some very specific methods of execution to take them down immediately, and for anyone else the methods would be serious overkill. Long term methods are an ordeal. Sanguivara was sentenced to starve, and they were to check to make sure she was dead in seven years. That was accounting for the food stores left behind and the prisoners that she could and did survive off of, plus an extra year or so because you can’t be too careful. Locking a Druid in an empty room to starve otherwise would take like two or three years because they are freakishly tough and can survive on their own quintessence. Plus, that whole locking her in thing didn’t go quite according to plan, as evidenced by the dead guards…
> 
> And remember that Shiro/Allura thing I promised? Finished it and it's called 'Incandescent' and it should be up tonight. That exercise in kicking my own ass is the reason this update is so late- I forced myself to finish it before I could post this so I would actually get it done.


	26. Starships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old and new collide by chance, the odds still somehow never low enough to be in your favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate your patience and I am so sorry it took almost three weeks for this update. My brain kind of walked out on me for two weeks and I couldn't look at this chapter at all during that time. It's a fairly calm one, I think, mostly fluff and dialogue. I almost wanted to save parts of it for after everyone is reunited but I have other ideas for that so I think we're good.
> 
> I decided to rewatch iZombie recently since my brain was being an asshole and there was this moment of complete mental disconnect when I heard Pidge’s voice in an episode. Like, my brain just went ‘waaaaiiiit a minute’ and I had to pause it. Also, I now need to find somewhere that I can make Pidge say ‘tampon sandals’ in this fic.

Keith wakes up first, yawning and immediately gagging on a mouthful of hair. His left arm is completely numb and he leans back away from the thick fluffy mess of hair as he gathers his bearings. It takes him a moment to realize he’s in his own room; his new room, the Red Paladin suite, but it’s his room now.

He can’t remember the last time he slept in his own bed. Too many nights lately dozing on the couch left his lower back with a permanent twinge in it that he suddenly can’t feel any more, and the permanent strain of exhaustion from skipping sleeping at all some nights has faded away. He glances down at the fluffy tumbleweed of hair in his face and starts to squirm backwards, careful not to disturb her.

It takes a solid minute of patient squirming to work his arm free from where it was pinned underneath the Green Paladin.

The girl in question is wrapped around Shiro’s side like a koala, and the Black Paladin is resting his cheek on her head, arms holding her snugly and snoring softly. Or, as softly as a chainsaw can rumble- that she’s not bothered by the sound currently rumbling in her ears is rather impressive.

But then Keith is surprised he wasn’t bothered by it either. He’s always been a light sleeper. He cracks out his neck and pads over to the bathroom, swiping something from the counter beside the sink.

Pidge makes a soft noise in her throat and shifts, rousing Shiro slowly from his own sleep.

Keith takes a quick photo with his cell phone, for posterity reasons.

“Morning,” Shiro yawns, rubbing at his eyes and blinking at the light from the bathroom. The phone is slid back onto the counter before he notices it.

“Mornin’.”

“Sleep well?”

“Very.”

“Going to get ready?”

Keith nods, covering his mouth when he feels the tugging of another impending yawn. The Black Paladin sits up slowly, backing up on his elbow and shifting the sleeping girl without waking her. She groans and buries her face in his side. She might also be moaning a soft ‘ _five more minutes mom_ ’ into his ribs, but it’s pretty muffled at the moment so it’s hard to say for sure.

“I’ll get her out of here.”

Keith nods as he slides the door shut. “Appreciate it.”

One of the first projects Pidge and Hunk had worked on after the reality of their situation sunk in was a surprisingly domestic one- four of the Paladins had music players and/or phones loaded with songs on them in their pockets when they left Earth. The nerd duo had spent a sleepless three day weekend improvising odd, lumpy-looking adaptors for their chargers if they had any and actual chargers if they didn’t, and eventually crafting up speaker systems that could connect to the devices. The first charger had been for Lance, at Hunk’s insistence, and the Blue Paladin hadn’t bothered to hold back happy tears when his dead cell phone took the charge.

He’d spent the next four hours blasting every song he could in the self-designated nerd-lab while the duo were working before Pidge threatened to erase them all and then (for good measure) jettison his phone out into the open abyss of space if he didn’t _chill the fuck out_.

Really it was a remarkable show of patience on her part. Keith doesn’t think he would have made it more than an hour before heading toward the airlocks. And he admits that’s being generous.

Since the devices are just glorified cameras and music players now that everyone is away from Earth Keith mostly uses his in the shower, putting on songs to listen to as he gets ready for the day.

He scrolls for a few seconds until he finds an old favorite, setting the rest on shuffle and hoping for the best. He belts out the lyrics with shameless abandon as he works the lather of something not-quite-shampoo into his hair. It smells a little like hickory and a little like cranberry and it’s a very strange shade of yellow-orange, but it works like shampoo so, like most aspects of life on the Castle of Lions, he doesn’t really question it.

That’s not entirely accurate- it comes out a pale robin’s egg blue from the bottle, but when it hits the skin of his hand it changes color and adopts the unusual but not unpleasant scent.

He really probably should ask what it’s supposed to be.

But then it was stocked in the showers already and his hair hasn’t fallen out yet so… eh.

 

The Red Paladin pauses toweling his hair and shoots a very confused look at the bed when he steps out of the bathroom. He’s inordinately grateful he’d put on pants before opening the door. “… I thought you two left?”

“We were going to, until I found out she’d never heard one of your shower concerts,” Shiro grins. His mechanical hand scratches gently through the girl’s scruffy bedhead- it looks distinctly like she shoved a fork into an electrical socket on a dare the way it sticks up in every direction and it’s a shockingly appropriate look for the little mad scientist. She paws faintly at sleep crust near her eyes.

“I’m honestly not that surprised you like vengeful woman country,” Pidge yawns, not moving from her comfortable position leaning into Shiro’s side, legs curled up underneath her. “But I _am_ surprised you can sing. You should do it more often.”

He settles the towel on his shoulders, flipping his damp hair over the top of it. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

“Your country accent is also really convincing. Kudos.”

“That’s his normal accent,” Shiro snickers. Pidge perks up considerably.

“Dad was from Texas,” Keith shrugs. “It’s hard not to pick up an accent like that when you’re around it all the time.”

The Green Paladin nods in understanding, slumping comfortably back into the body beside her. Shiro blinks for a moment before glancing down.

“Pidge have you been gene-splicing? I know we’ve talked about this…”

Her hand slaps her face with a sound that reverberates through the room and her eyes almost roll back in her head when she realizes she’s purring again. She growls through gritted teeth. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? No, I have not been gene-splicing. This is a Paladin thing- _the purring is a Paladin thing and where would I even get cat DNA out here anyway_?”

Shiro purses his lips and turns, ignoring the affronted gasp the smallest Paladin makes when he doesn’t accept her explanation. “Keith?”

“It’s a Paladin thing, yeah. We can all do it.” He nods. “She does it a lot.”

Pidge claps a hand over her chest in offense. “ _I do not_.”

Keith folds his arms and gives her a very bemused expression. “Pidge, I don’t think you realize this but you do it _all the time_. Especially when you’re working in the lab. It’s kind of adorable.”

The Green Paladin reels back, aghast. “I am not adorable- _Shiro tell him I’m not adorable_!”

“Oh Pidge, I love you,” Shiro chuckles and rubs her head, ignoring the pout on her face, “but even if I _could_ change his mind I’m not going to lie for you.”

A look of complete betrayal paints over her freckled features and she smacks his hand away, folding her arms over her chest with a much-too-dramatic-to-be-serious huff.

“I’ve heard that one before,” Keith snorts fondly, shaking his head.

“Did you ever seriously expect me to lie about your tattoo?”

She rounds back to the others with lightning speed. “Wait Keith you have a tattoo? _Since when_?”

“Pidge, kid, look at me,” Shiro laughs, biting his lip. “Can you honestly look me in the eye and say that Keith is not the kind of person who would get an illegal tattoo at sixteen _just because he can_?”

The Red Paladin clears his throat to correct the egregious error- “Fifteen.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Shiro rolls his eyes. “It was like three weeks before your birthday. Of course. Sorry. You were _fifteen_ when you got your illegal underage tattoo. _My bad_.”

Keith just crinkles his nose mockingly.

“If you’re going to do this then I guess I can tell her about your piercings.” Keith looks over at Pidge, expression steady but a dangerous smile hidden in his voice. “Note the _plural_ , there.”

Shiro’s eyes widen comically and his entire face turns bright tomato red. It’s actually rather impressive. “Or you can _not do that_.”

“But I think I _can_ though. Hey Pidge, you notice his face? There’re no piercings there. Huh. _Weird_ …” The Red Paladin’s expression is carefully deadpan but there’s a clear undercurrent of amusement to his tone.

“This is delightful,” Pidge rumbles, watching as Shiro and Keith devolve into a brotherly battle of increasingly embarrassing information.

“Oh you’re not getting out of this one,” Shiro laughs, rounding on Pidge. “What was that Matt mentioned, about a certain ‘Minnie Scruffles’…?”

“First of all,” Pidge hisses, “I’m going to _kill_ Matt when I find him, and then when he’s dead I’ll reanimate his corpse so I can _kill him again_ , and second _you leave Doctor Minerva Scruffles out of this_.”

Keith furrows his brows. “… Doctor Minerva _Scruffles_?”

“A plush toy bunny.”

“Who was also a microbiologist, thank you,” Pidge folds her arms and sniffs. “She had a lab coat and everything.”

“Oh I know,” Shiro grins and elbows the smaller Paladin. “I saw the pictures. You know, your brother documented your childhood rather thoroughly.”

“ _That son of a_ -”

“Language, Pidge.”

Pidge narrows her eyes, weighing her options. “… _biiiitch_ ,” she finishes under her breath. Keith snickers into his hand.

Shiro pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, shaking his head. “Pidge, you’re above this.”

“I am five feet tall, I am above _nothing_.”

“There’s no way you’re that tall Pidge,” Keith coughs.

“See? I’m not even above _that_.”              

Shiro just sighs.

 

Despite her best efforts Keith hears the Green Paladin coming and his ears swivel as she creeps up behind him. He doesn’t bother looking up from his sketch of the Red Lion as he lets her know she’s not nearly so stealthy as she thinks she is.

“I was wondering where you went off to.”

He can’t see the look on her face but he can imagine it crashes like the Hindenburg and she sighs.

“Ran a diagnostic on Shiro’s arm, made sure everything was good.” Her feet shuffle lazily up to the back of the couch now that she’s given up on trying to sneak up on him. “It is.”

There’s an odd undercurrent to her voice and he tilts his head.

“What do you want Pidge?”

She sighs dramatically and flops face-down down on the couch next to him. He doesn’t dare say it out loud, _he knows better_ , but the action calls to mind something Lance has done once or a dozen times before and a secret smirk tugs at his mouth.

“I’m _bored_.”

He hums, twirling the stylus in his hand. The lines in his latest sketch don’t quite look right, but he can’t quite figure out why. If he had to guess he’s probably just been staring at them too long. “Blowtorch bored or break-in bored?”

Her voice is muffled by the cushions. “Break-in bored.”

“And let me guess,” he sighs, setting down his stylus. “You want someone to split the blame with when you almost inevitably get in trouble?”

“ _Pleeeaaase_.”

She’s going to be the death of him.

“… What did you have in mind?”

“Well since you asked,” Pidge brightens, rolling over and pulling a tablet out from one of the pockets in her cargo shorts. She sets the back of her head in his lap and lifts the tablet to an angle they can both read it from. Without the little handheld translator-bookmark thing he uses it doesn’t matter much, he still can’t read even basic Altean. He’s been practicing learning Galra in his free time anyway. “The greenhouse takes up about half of this space right here, it’s a lot bigger than I was expecting; like, a lot a lot,” Pidge gestures to the map display. “And it makes sense to put it there, since you’d want it as close as possible to Green’s energy. So, looking at everything else, I can’t help but wonder, what’s over _here_? What’s in this space on the other side near Blue’s hangar? It’s not nearly as big as the greenhouse, but it’s still _huge_. And it’s right above the main water storage.”

The Red Paladin taps his chin thoughtfully. “The secret passage to the greenhouse is in your wardrobe, right? And the main entrance for it is still inaccessible?”

“Yeah?”

“So whatever’s connected to the Blue Lion would reasonably be connected to the Blue Paladin suite, right?”

“Yeah,” she nods, already _loving_ where this is going.

“I think it’s safe to assume both of us can pick locks like it’s nobody’s business,” he hums as he glances conspicuously at the ceiling, “so… let’s break into Lance’s new room and find out. It’d be a lot faster than spending a whole day trying to hack into a locked-down elevator.”

“This is why you’re my favorite,” the Green Paladin purrs.

“I thought Shiro was your favorite.”

“You’ve usurped him by virtue of your willingness to encourage my bad behavior,” she grins deviously, “where he only ever tries to stop me. So you’re the favorite now.”

He tries not to laugh, shaking his head. “I feel like I should be _concerned_ by this…”

“Hey, I don’t have to include you in any of-”

“I’m not _that_ concerned,” he shoves her off him lightly. “Lead the way, troublemaker.”

 

The secret elevator opens up to reveal the sound of rushing water and the smell of sweet, fresh spring water. The room is towering and vast and Pidge has this pained, delighted flashback to childhoods spent at waterparks as her eyes roam over the artificial pools and rivers and waterfalls that climb and sprawl throughout the space.

“I’m pretty sure Lance is going to grow gills when he finds out about this,” the Green Paladin laughs, jogging out of the elevator over to the largest pool in the center of the room, the one connected to everything else. There’s a slight rolling wave to the water and she wonders if there are settings for it somewhere- maybe it could be a surfing simulator too. “He’ll never leave this room.”

“The Castle will be so _quiet_ ,” Keith snorts as he kicks off his boots, dipping the toes of one foot in carefully. It’s cool, but not quite cold.

“You do know a lot of that noise is you, right?” Pidge snickers, tossing her shoes back away from the water. “The two of you are most of the noise, what with your fighting I’m like eighty-percent sure is actually just dorky pigtail-pulling because you two don’t know how to deal with your feelings.”

The Red Paladin frowns and briefly considers shoving Pidge into the water.

“What the hell are you doing?” Keith hisses, mortified as Pidge chucks her shirt off to the side.

“The fuck does it look like I’m doing?” She laughs, hooking her thumbs in her shorts. “Going for a swim- it’s not like I brought a bikini into space, and it’s not like I’m getting naked.”

“But that-” the Red Paladin is cut off when Pidge’s pants slam into his face.

“ _Not like I’m naked_!”

The Green Paladin clambers up the side of a stone-like outcropping and sprints to the very edge and hesitates, arms pinwheeling as she comes to a screeching halt. She bows at the waist to peer over the edge, waiting to see if it works; it always worked on Matt. A few seconds later Keith moves up behind her and before he can blink her hands wrap over his arm and under his shoulder and suddenly he’s underwater, staring up at a blurry cackling face. She’s nearly doubled over with laughter when he resurfaces.

“That works every time- how does that work every time,” she snorts, grinning brightly as he glowers up through the long hair sticking to his face. Pidge just twirls around on her heel, throwing her arms out, and falls backwards off the ledge.

 

If Coran hears the frantic murmuring and shushing behind Allura’s door when he knocks he makes no mention of it.

“Princess,” he clears his throat, biting his lip as there’s one last frantic round of shushing behind the door, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Of course not Coran. I’m not busy at all.”

“ _Hey-_!” Smack. “ _Ow_ …”

She clears her throat. “What is it Coran?”

“It appears the young Paladins have found the pool.”

“Oh that sounds lovely.”

“Yes well they broke the key pad for the door to the Blue Paladin suite in order to find it.” Impatient, that’s what they are. Fixing it will only take a moment but honestly the fact they couldn’t take a few ticks to wait makes his eyes roll involuntarily in his skull.

“That’s… less lovely.”

There’s a soft snickering and another slap, followed by incoherent grumbling.

“I think a swim would be a good way to spend the afternoon, since you’re taking the day off.” He hopes the Princess understands what he’s trying to imply right now, and if the frustrated groan on the other side of the door is any indication she _does_.

“You’re absolutely right, Coran, is the main elevator for it unlocked?”

“I can have it up and running shortly before I return to my shift on the Bridge.”

“Thank you.”

Coran just shakes his head as he steps away. They’re not nearly as subtle as they like to think they are.

 

“ _Really, you two_?”

Pidge and Keith nearly jolt out of their skins and pause mid-splash fight at the sounds of Shiro’s voice from somewhere above them.

They notice far too late that Shiro isn’t wearing any shoes, and by the time they register his shirt coming off they don’t have the time to swim away from his devastating cannonball.

Keith resurfaces first, spitting a mouthful of water into the Black Paladin’s grinning face like a pufferfish. Try as he might he can’t maintain his glower through the older Paladin’s laughter. Pidge pops up a second later and lunges on top of Shiro’s shoulders, pushing him into the water blindly as her bangs cling to her face.

Allura’s voice in the near distance somewhere dances the line between cheering them on and scolding them as they turn on their leader.

It takes the younger Paladins a while to realize the vulnerability they’ve just witnessed from their leader- he’s not always so above it all, he goofs off with the best of them so that’s nothing new, but he’s always been very careful to keep what scars he can hidden when he can.

There aren’t as many as they’d expected. A lot of mottled scar tissue around his right bicep, a few ugly and deep gouges along his back, a number of thin slashes across his chest and abs, but all of it less than they had somehow imagined. Some burns and a little mottled tissue here and there on his left forearm. There is a rather ugly looking irregular bite along his left side, from something large and with at least two rows of teeth, and it ducks down half-hidden below the waistband of his pants, but there’s so much less than they had expected to see. They had been more focused on other things when they picked him up from that quiet planet a few days ago, they hadn’t noticed anything then.

They know he catches them staring, but he doesn’t move to cover up the scars and they find it easier to look past them now that they know what is there and what’s not.

Especially when they’re too busy attacking him to pay much attention.

 

Pidge eventually climbs out of the water onto a low overhang, basking lazily under the artificial sunlight as she listens to the distant sounds of laughter and water-based roughhousing. She stretches her arms out over her head and arches her back with a high yawn, sinking boneless back against the warm and sparkling not-quite-concrete stone that made up the bases and ledges of the structures. She hears sloshing and a soft grunt as someone pulls themselves out of the water nearby and she pries one eye open.

Shiro nods at her as he climbs out of the water. She raises one hand in a half-hearted wave before melting back against the warm stone with a wiggle and a happy purr.

“You really _do_ purr all the time.”

Pidge blindly flips him off.

“ _Pidge_!”

“Right, sorry,” she groans, “you’re not Keith. Sorry.”

“And I thought Matt was bad…”

“As bad as I am, my brother is where I get it from,” Pidge chuckles. “I still firmly stand by the idea that I am the reincarnated form of a twin he ate in the womb, now back for _revenge_.”

“You know what,” Shiro laughs as he settles in next to her, “I think I can buy that.”

A twist of pain in her chest reminds her that _of course he can_ , when he first saw her a few days ago he thought she _was_ Matt. She shoves it back with the reminder that not so long ago she deliberately styled herself after her brother, she can’t be disappointed if it _works_.

“He says since there’s no body, there’s no proof,” Pidge continues, sitting up slowly. “I think the proof of his guilt is enough though.”

Shiro’s eyes fall to her forearm and she’s reminded again of the Lichtenburg markings she’s already become comfortable with.

“Had that since day four or five, I think,” she shrugs. “Whenever we had that mess with Sendak.”

 

“How do you do it?”

“Hm?”

“How do you do it?” Pidge sighs, setting her chin on her knee as the other leg dangles over the edge of the overhang. Her toes don’t quite brush the water below even when she points her foot out. “How do you not tell him about her?”

It takes several seconds for the Black Paladin to catch up. “… You know about her?”

“I met her,” she sighs again. “After the wormhole went wrong I ended up on Earth. Long story short I stayed at her house, saw her and my mom exchange not-so-subtle goo-goo eyes; seriously, it sounds like they’ve always loved each other, they’ve just been too stubborn to admit it. She’s practically- she _is_ family…” She turns to rest her cheek on one knee and looks up at him. “I mean, if things had gone differently… we could have grown up together. Matt would have been the ringleader of two little hellions instead of one.”

“You just want all the brothers for yourself.”

“That too.” She smiles softly. “But still… I offered to tell him about her. And what I know about… him.”

Shiro sighs and leans forward on his elbows. His toes flex and curl against the water over the very edge of the ledge. “And let me guess- he said no. Pidge, what do you know about his parents?”

“I-”

“I mean the ones who raised him,” he smiles. “The ones he calls mom and dad.”

She racks her brain, frowning faintly. A few little crumbs here and there don’t amount to much, but then she’s never really pushed for more information than he’s ever offered up. It never seems like a good idea. It doesn’t seem right to push, at least not yet.

He nods. “They were good people, Pidge. I’m sure you figured out a long time ago that one of his deepest traits is loyalty. He is a lot of things; reckless, stubborn, impulsive-”

“Great with explosives…”

Shiro rounds on Pidge with an aghast expression on his face. She leans back, not quite sure what the problem here is. It’s hardly _new_ information.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Shiro sighs, trying very, very hard to forget that thought, “he is deeply loyal, and he probably wants to be loyal to their memories. Asking might feel like a betrayal for him. He’s not _you_ \- he might not _want_ to know. And now that he knows there’s someone here with answers… If he ever does want to know, he’ll ask you. I know he will.”

The Green Paladin nods, not at all satisfied but at least willing to accept the explanation. “Did you ever offer to tell him?”

“I didn’t think it was my place. I thought it was hers’.” He glances over to where the Red Paladin is sprawled out and floating content on the surface, unaware of Allura sneaking up behind him. Shiro shakes his head softly. “I encouraged her to tell him, confronted her a few times, but she didn’t. So I said nothing. I can’t even imagine how I could have offered to say anything like that anyway. How would I have even…”

She nods and they both turn back to watch the others play fight in the water for a few minutes.

Cool metal pokes her side and Pidge makes a strangled noise in her throat somewhere in the vicinity of a furiously indignant parrot whose tail feathers have just been roughly pulled out.

“What happened here?”

“My appendix,” Pidge squawks again as he pokes at the thin silvery scar again. “Stop, it’s ticklish- I _will_ punch you.”

Shiro looks thoroughly amused by the threat but still puts his hands up in surrender. He knows damn well she will follow through on that threat even if she’s more likely to hurt her own hand hitting him than she is to leave a bruise. He pauses, pursing his lips in thought as he moves to cross his legs and lean forward on his elbows.

“I could swear Matt said you’ve never had it out though.”

She glances aside. “Yeah well that was then.”

“Is that actually what happened?”

Pidge narrows her eyes at the too-gentle tone of his voice, drawing up the memory of the hospital room almost without thinking as she puts one hand on his shoulder. He blinks rapidly when she pulls back a moment later satisfied with her own proof.

“How-”

“Paladin bond stuff,” she purses her lips, glancing away. “It’s like the wormhole mess unlocked a ton of weird Paladin and Lion powers or something. And… I know you caught a flash of my nightmare last night. I know you saw… something, but Green won’t tell me what. What did you see?”

Shiro learned how to hide from the others as quickly as they learned to hide from him. He knows how to conceal memories, and he knows how to lie. He skirts carefully around the truth by being honest in small degrees.

“Smoke. Ash. Fire. I felt incredible heat, and I could smell something-” _flesh_ “-burning. And I heard screaming. No words, just screaming.”

She surveys him cautiously, like she’s not sure she believes him.

Like she _wants_ to believe him, but she knows better.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but you should. At least with someone. Keeping it all inside the way you are isn’t healthy.”

“If I did tell you,” she whispers, wrapping her arms in a tense vice over her leg. “If I did tell you, tell everyone what happened… I don’t know that we’d recover from it. This is for all of us, Shiro. This is for Voltron, for the universe. We don’t want to hurt you.” Her Lion presses into her mind the way a cat rubs against a leg and she huffs weakly.

The Black Paladin sighs and leans over to tuck a strand of damp wavy hair behind her ear, pursing his lips. He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t believe that, Pidge, but I won’t push you yet. I know it’s still fresh, still tender. But I need you to promise me something.”

She grunts softly.

“When it gets to be too much, when you even _start_ to think you can’t take it anymore, come to me. Please Pidge.”

She grunts again, and he taps the side of her head lightly with the heel of his hand- he had to have gotten that from Matt, her brother always did that when he was concern-scolding her. Or maybe it’s just an older brother thing. Either way her defenses crumble before she can block that thought out.

“I may not be the most adult-y adult, but I can still help you. Promise me, Pidge.”

She chews on her lip before nodding.

“Out loud.”

“Well aren’t you just an insistent son of a-” she mumbles under her breath.

“ _Language_.”

“Fine, fine,” she huffs as she throws up her hands, kicking both of her legs out over the edge slowly. Her fingernails scrape roughly against the stone as she plants her hands beside her. “I promise I’ll come to you if I can’t… if I can’t handle it anymore. Alright?”

“Yeah,” Shiro smiles softly, and his hand moves from her head to her back, patting her between her shoulder blades. “Alright.”

And then Pidge suddenly finds herself underwater.

At least when she swears underwater Shiro can’t hear her, and thus can’t scold her. She lets every curse she can think of out in a stream of half-furious bubbles as she folds her arms and floats steadily back up toward the surface.

When she resurfaces Shiro is giving her a teasing smile with no attempt to feign innocence.

Pidge glowers, ducking half her face under the water to gather enough to spit at the older Paladin. He leans forward and rests his chin in one hand.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Her eyes narrow.

“I’m serious Pidge.”

She blows a few bubbles, contemplating her options.

A thunderous boom echoes through the Castle and for a tick and a half the artificial gravity cuts out, lights flickering erratically as a second explosion follows the first. Pidge sputters as she resurfaces above the water when it comes back down, scrambling for her bearings. She reaches for the metal hand above her head without hesitation and Shiro yanks her out of the water to hold her close as another boom echoes through the room.

Keith is sputtering and coughing in the shallows as he struggles to his feet and Allura is clawing her way up the side of a ledge near an artificial waterfall nearby as she begins to bark out orders, panting through the shock and the initial panic.

“Paladins, to your Lions!”

The Black Paladin is almost proud at the sudden way the arms of Voltron snap to attention and scramble out of the water or across the ledges, faces set with nothing but determination.

Shiro hesitates, clearly torn- the Black Lion is still recuperating. He can’t fight. But he _needs_ to fight. He can’t send them out alone. They’re still only two pieces.

“Shiro, you’re with me,” Allura calls, watching as the two arms of Voltron scramble out of the room and stumble, sliding ungainly on wet feet through the main elevator door. Her voice softens slightly as she touches his arm. “They’ll be fine. They’re more than capable.”

“I’m allowed to worry,” he shrugs softly. She smiles and squeezes his bicep.

“I know.”

 

Pidge forgoes the armor, there’s no time for it now, and she makes it to her Lion’s hangar in record time, the frantic _thap thap thap_ of her wet feet on the cold floor almost comical to her ears. Another blast rocks the Castle and sends her tumbling shoulder-first into the doorframe; there’s going to be an ugly bruise there tomorrow. She leaps through her Lion’s open mouth and finds the metal form of her body already moving up as she lands gracelessly in her chair.

The claws of the Green Lion- her claws now, the moment she releases herself to the sensation of her Lion the boundaries between them are gone, these great metal claws are hers as much as her flesh and blood limbs are and they obey her whims just as naturally- scrape violently against the metal floor of the hangar as she clambers free, chasing a distant roar somehow already on the outside of the Castle. A high noise she thinks might be laughter slips out of her throat.

“Save some for me!”

“Not a _chance_ , Pidge!”

The Green Lion nearly slams bodily into the Red Lion as Pidge arrives on the battlefield, lethal metal tail thrashing wildly and damp skin electrified as she takes in the sight before her.

A Galra battleship has stumbled upon them; class R, so not quite as big as the standard class G’s the Voltron crew are used to running up against, but also so much more maneuverable than the G’s. It has no jumbo ion cannons like the G’s do but as a class R it’s more of an exploratory vessel anyway and is armed with a number of smaller heavy-hitters, plus a small fleet of AI Stardrop combat ships that function as protective satellites. She’s not exactly happy to run against R’s, they’re a pain in the ass for Hunk and Shiro to handle as the bulkier Lions and still a hell of a fight for her and Keith as the faster Lions, but she’d take a dozen R’s any day over the prototype Z’s and K’s she’s been reading about lately.

Ah, the beauty of data-mining. All the information she could ever want (and that the Galra empire would love to keep from her) right at her fingertips.

She purrs brilliantly and Green nudges them both forward as they dive into an oncoming cluster of Stardrops, tearing through them with eager claws. She can sense off to the side Keith and Red spiraling through a section with blazing Lion fire. It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep track of the positions of everyone when there are only two Lions out and fighting.

A blast from a small cannon mounted on the helm of the class R battleship hits her square in the shield and knocks her off course. Pidge snarls high in her throat as she recovers, twisting to aim a shot of white-hot laser fire with her tail arched high across her back. It catches one of the satellite ships instead and she shoulders her way through the swarm with a burst of speed, flipping around at the last possible moment to slam her shielded back into the cannon that had struck her- it makes a scandalously _beautiful_ crunching noise under the solid force of her massive metal body.

She doesn’t need to destroy this ship, she won’t bother wasting her time trying, she just needs to buy enough time for Allura and Coran to get them out of here. Hopefully _sooner_ rather than _later_.

And in the meantime, she’ll cause as much damage and destruction as she can to occupy her time.

There’s a hot flash through the connection between girl and machine and Pidge sees something in her Lion’s mindspace that makes her scream with delight.

“Please tell me that is the _good idea_ scream and not the _bad idea_ scream,” Keith groans. She can see a red-white flare on the edges of her vision where he’s flying circles around the contingent of automated Stardrops going after him, picking them off with his tail.

“Is there a difference?”

“No,” the Red Paladin snorts. “There really isn’t.”

The whirring and rumbling of a nearby cannon locking onto her position flits through her ears and a sudden weight bears down across the shared shoulders of girl and feline, feral energy and blazing quintessence building up above them as they stare it down with bared teeth.

The cannon builds up a charge quickly but the Green Lion is faster still and a neon blast of light crashes through the weapon in the next moment. It takes a tick before an explosion of meaty olive green vines winds through the dark steel weapon.

“ _Please_ tell me somebody saw that!” Pidge cackles, shoving off of the ship and tearing a few massive gashes in the hull of it with her claws in the process. An explosion of backed up energy from the vine-riddled cannon follows her escape and oh she’s pretty sure that noise she made was not one anybody wanted to hear just now.

She sees the Red Lion take a nosedive (controlled, she suspects, but with Keith it’s sometimes hard to tell) and she tracks their descent, following just behind as she gathers more energy and aims for the half a dozen Stardrops nipping at the Lion’s heels. The cannon on her shoulders is solid, cutting down her maneuverability, and it feels like a strange extension of herself that she’d hate to see on her flesh and blood body even as it feels like that’s exactly what it is.

She catches two in the blast but the eruption of unnatural plant matter catches all of them in a mass of pulsing green. Two of the six are still firing their weapons at the Red Lion.

A flicker in her brain ** _\- The vines are flammable._**

“The vines are flammable,” the Green Paladin parrots, and Keith calls in understanding as the Red Lion whips around and shoots back up with devastating speed.

So the nosedive _was_ controlled. Huh.

They burst into blue-violet flame that sucks out as quickly as it starts (no air, right, _duh_ ) as the Red Lion and her Paladin breathe holy hellfire down on the bots and Pidge is reminded faintly of eucalyptus for some reason. Though the flames go out immediately it does seem that it’s still enough to destroy the Stardrops because they stop firing and twisting around.

There’s a shrill _breep_ and a delighted shriek that jolts Pidge nearly out of her skin.

“RHODA!”

“What?” Pidge grunts over the comms, cringing as Allura’s sudden voice rings and echoes in her brain. Green loads up another burst for her… she calls it a soul canon, and Pidge feels all of her toes go numb for a hot second. She rounds on three fighters riding her ass and catches all three of them in a weaving, pulsing mass of deep olive vines. They’re stuck together but they’re still moving, slower now, still firing after her, and she ducks underneath them with a flick of her tail.

“Keith, Pidge, get inside,” the Princess laughs, her voice high and edging on giddy hysterics, “we’re going to Rhoda!”

The Red Paladin’s voice is strained as he fires on another Stardrop, tearing clear through it and aiming for the next mess of vines Pidge has left, fire flickering at the edges of his mouth as Red readies herself. “What’s on Rhoda?”

“ _Hunk_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick thing- the songs Keith listens to aren't named, but the ones I keep picturing in my head are "Goin' Back To Ponchaloula", "Redneck Woman", and "Before He Cheats". Because I may be a pop-punk music fan at heart but I do love me some country here and there too. I've been on the southern Keith bandwagon for a while now but after hearing his canon dad with a country accent I am fucking dedicated. I have so many expressions I've picked up over the years and I want to use so many of them here.
> 
> A personal favorite of mine is 'bout as useless as a screen door on a submarine', and I use it a lot.
> 
> Honestly that little ‘five more minutes mom’ kinda stung to write. ‘Five more minutes’ was cute, but tacking ‘mom’ at the end suddenly made it hurt me in the heartparts.
> 
> The pool thing was something I came up with at the same time as the greenhouse and I’ll be totally honest I like an indoor waterpark way better than a regular pool that’s just upside-down. I have too many questions about that fucking pool.
> 
> Keith being good with explosives has to be canon, if for no other reason than in the very first episode his rescue of Shiro involved the use of explosions in the distance as a distraction to thin the herd.
> 
> I was planning on having part 2 be chapters 16-30, but it looks like we might be closer to chapters 16-35. There’s a lot of space that needs to be filled in. I have missed Lance and Hunk dearly and I am so happy to be able to write them in properly now. I feel so bad it's taken this long to get to them; this fic is so much bigger than I planned for it to be.
> 
> I love all the Paladins. I admit Pidge is my favorite by a lot and I adore her, but I love them all.


	27. Pick of the Litter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First to be chosen, last to be found; when the forest finds herself at home, the ocean finds himself adrift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately in an attempt to not reveal anything too soon this is a super short chapter. Not so unfortunately this means we get a double-update tonight.
> 
> This takes place right around chapter one so this is technically a pretty old chapter.

Lance jerks awake, limbs flailing violently in a sudden freefall as he scrambles to adjust to reality.

It’s dark. Darker than he’s ever known, a shade of black he’s never seen even on the darkest nights. He can only just see past his own nose to catch a distant glimmer of starlight above his head through what he slowly begins to recognize as the large almond eyes of his Lion.

He pants and scrambles for his bearings, realizing with a heavy dread that he’s floating. Wherever he is lacks any kind of gravity. So, space. _Really narrows those options down_. His eyes slowly adjust to the darkness as he turns. He pushes past the low pulsing in his skull as he registers his surroundings.

Irregular, blobby little pearls of dark blood drift past his face, splattering and smearing in slow motion against the drifting debris. Crystals, wires, metal panels, all of the innards of her Lion on gory display, streaked with blackish red… Blood and chaos like something out of a nightmare. The wires weave loose in the air like thin, spindly strands of seaweed, brushing against him occasionally as he drifts aimlessly through the great metal skull.

He sucks in a shaky breath through his nose in surprise, suddenly curling into himself in a violent coughing fit when he inhales a mouthful of his own blood. It’s all he can do not to suddenly heave at the feeling of thick coppery fluid coating his throat.

So his nose is broken. That’s where the blood is coming from. Good to know.

His helmet must have come off at some point if he broke his nose. Probably by smashing face-first into the back of his chair at one point if the thick blackish splash across the back of the headrest is any indication. Whatever happened in that wormhole may as well have been a hurricane for what it’s done to him, to the Blue Lion.

His breath comes in ragged pants as he forces himself to breathe only through his mouth. The sound is rough and disgustingly wet to his ears and it makes his stomach churn.

“Alright, time to focus,” he says, throat scratchy and hoarse. He drifts slowly through the blackened cabin and centers himself in his own mind as an array of wires and panels bump and brush against him. It’s time to focus. _Focus_. He throws on a cheery chime to his voice as he calls out to his Lion; “Hey beautiful, you awake? I need you to tell me where we are.”

His Lion doesn’t respond. There is no purr, no flush of images, no hum of ideas. The lights don’t even flicker in response. No noise echoes in his head or through the cabin.

Nothing happens at all.

“Beautiful? Hey, Blue, Blue _this isn’t funny_. Come on, talk to me,” he laughs breathily, bloody spittle flicking out from his lips as he grows more desperate. “This is not the time to be goofing around gorgeous _come on_ , we have a job to do. You and I both know the others are just utterly lost without us. Rise and shine, princess, we have work to do.”

Nothing.

Nada.

Zip.

Zelch.

Zero.

He receives nothing. There is no response. No flickers, no flashes, no sounds or words or anything at all. He reaches for her in that space she’s claimed inside of his head only to feel like his fingers are brushing through mist.

The air around him is quiet- unnaturally quiet. Lance can’t hear the gentle whirring and pulsing of his Lion’s inner workings, sounds he’s become intimately familiar with. Sounds that filled the background of his day to day life, noises that he only occasionally consciously noticed anymore. Sounds that even in what must be true silence he should still pick up on. But he hears nothing from the Lion. He can hear nothing but the sound of his own wet panting and the growing rush of blood in his ears.

The Blue Lion is frighteningly silent.

She should never be this quiet. The only reason she would no longer make any sounds at all…

No.

He refuses to consider it.

He refuses.

She’s _Blue_.

She’s not going to go down because of some god-forsaken wormhole.

She’s just resting.

Yeah, that’s it.

She’s resting.

She’s taking a nap.

Lance nods to himself.

He just needs to be patient.

He doesn’t need to think about life-support and whether he’ll have enough oxygen to make it until the Castle arrives, or even where he is, or where anyone is, or anything in the universe except how pretty the sky is and how wonderful his Lion is, because if he thinks about anything else he’s going to lose it and he needs to keep it together right now.

The Blue Paladin is bathed in darkness and starlight, drifting aimlessly in a growing pool of wires, crystals, metal, and his own blood. The blood of a Lion and the blood of a Paladin blending together. In his slow spiral he manages to grab on to one side of the Lion, clinging desperately to a half-torn panel. One gentle shove forward with his burning arms is enough to send him floating up towards the helm.

All that practice in the zero-g simulator paid off. He manages to catch himself on the armrest of his chair and floats steadily in place as he peers out through the Blue Lion’s glassy eyes, not even bothering to hope he’d know where the two of them ended up. He can see nothing but black sky and distant starlight.

His mind starts trying to connect them, hunting for constellations even when he knows the only ones he can recognize are from down on a little planet across the cosmos.

He shakes his head, grimacing when a few passing blood globules splash cold and sticky against his cheek.

Something’s wrong with his eyes. He hates to say that- his eyes are perfect, easily one of his top five favorite physical features- but…

Something has to be wrong with his eyes.

Because he sees a Galra ship in the distance, on the very edges of what his vision can gather. That sharp silhouette, that shade of violet… It’s a Galra ship, he knows it is.

And he knows that cannot actually be fucking possible right now.

There’s no _fucking_ way.

But apparently there is indeed a fucking way. Because that Galra ship descends like a bird of prey and is right above him now.

Blue rumbles awake slowly, suddenly, as if picking up on his fear and she washes over his senses like a cold wave. She feels like midnight in the ocean and being consumed by saltwater and the tides with only the distant moon for company and Lance welcomes her into his head with a relief he can’t be bothered to conceal. He drowns himself in the sensation of Blue without a moment of hesitation.

“You worried me, beautiful,” he laughs as she purrs gently inside his head and in the cool air around him. He stops laughing right after, though, as the sudden pain of her injuries rockets through their connection. She starts to flicker and rumble alive, light and warmth and affection driving the emptiness away, soothing at the pain she’s sharing with him.

“Blue Paladin,” a powerful distant voice commands, filtering through his Lion’s ears and into his violently throbbing skull. “Surrender your Lion.”

“Ah _shit_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention in the notes of the last update but I came up with stuffed animals for all the Paladins because overthinking everything is pretty much my thing, so we have-
> 
> Pidge- Doctor Minerva Scruffles, a white bunny  
> Keith- Comet, a tiger with mismatched eyes  
> Hunk- Jupiter, a teddy bear with a little heartbeat noise machine in it  
> Shiro- Mochi, a calico cat I named after the one in BH6 because I am lazy  
> Lance- Alonzo, a pegasus with black fur and white hair because honestly it feels like it suits him, I don't know why


	28. Bouquets and Crowns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flowers are a nigh constant in the universe, as are the traditions around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a long one, but I'm pretty sure nobody is going to complain so hey, neither will I. If you're not sure and you're like me so you usually just go to the last chapter in an update, 27 and 28 were posted at the same time so there you go.
> 
> Quick note: For Rhodarian architecture I picture something with a heavy sci-fi styled blend of art deco and solarpunk, lots of organic looking shapes and intricate decoration and floaty shit.

The planet before them is a massive, glimmering gas giant in every color the rainbow, swirling and curling in great iridescent storms across the expanse of its surface. Pidge only questions it for a moment before her eyes flick over to a nearby screen and she sees the information she needs- Rhoda is indeed the gas giant, and it is the _moons_ (she glances up and sees four, but the map says six, the others must be on the other side of the planet) that are inhabited. It is on one of the moons that the Yellow Lion has landed.

One over on the far side of the planet, if the scans are accurate.

Pidge bounces on the balls of her feet, still riding high on her adrenaline rush from the fight they just escaped, and Keith elbows her weakly, still riding out the high of excess energy in his own body. She almost has a mind to elbow him back but she’s a little too twitchy for her aim to be any good right now.

Allura casts a long look at her two jittering Paladins and her expression turns apologetic. “Keith, I feel it would be best for you to stay on the Castle. We don’t know what exactly it is the people of Rhoda have been through, and it would be wrong of me to put your safety at risk by taking you among their people. I know you hardly look like a fullblooded Galran, or really even very Galran at all, but I would rather not take that chance if it’s all the same to you.”

Rhoda had reacted to the sudden presence of an unknown ship appearing in their solar system with swift violence, moving to defend themselves with a show of impressive force until the moment the Lions revealed themselves; only then was Allura able to hail their council and broker a meeting with some very deeply apologetic and embarrassed aliens.

The Red Paladin freezes and presses his lips in a tight, thin line before he nods, posture stiff as all the fight suddenly drains out of him. His ears don’t pin back even though it’s clear he’s struggling to keep them in place, trying his very best not to broadcast his hurt.

Even though he _understands_ , that doesn’t make it easier.

It’s not like it’s easy on _him_.

“Don’t worry, Fluff,” Pidge says as she claps one rough hand on his back, making sure to send impulses of soothing affection through the blunt contact, “I’ll make sure you get first dibs on Hunk when we get him back on board.”

Pidge can see the barely contained amusement quirking at his mouth even as he frowns at her and she shoots him a cheeky grin as she steps backward toward her drop. She raises her hand in a mock salute, nodding when he rolls his eyes and returns the gesture with even _drier_ effort.

“We’ll be back in a tick and a half.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Allura laughs, folding her arms and quirking one elegant brow. She adjusts the fluffy towel wrapped over herself. “You need to get dressed first.”

Pidge glances down, surprised that she’s still in her underwear. Everyone still is. Suddenly the chill of the air breaks through the warm energy in her veins and makes the damp material feel like ice on her skin.

“Right. Yeah. That’d be a good idea.”

Keith bumps her shoulder gently, shaking his head. “Points for trying to make one hell of a first impression.”

“Shut your face, you,” she sticks out her tongue.

 

Shiro is a very lovely and very _painful_ shade of scarlet from his neck to his ears, adamantly looking anywhere but at the Princess as she throws another dress to the floor in growing frustration. Coran is grabbing gowns out from her closet almost as fast as she can reject them, and Keith and Pidge are adding their commentary and suggestions with folded arms and concerned faces.

“What about that one with the sheer sleeves, the aquamarine dress?”

“No, that won’t do, the skirt is far too short.”

“What about that silver one on the bed?”

“That is a _nightgown_ , I cannot wear that in public.”

“You’d be the only one who knew.”

“And I’d know it’s uncouth,” she sighs, tapping one bare foot and bouncing restlessly in nothing more than a light shift that leaves surprisingly little to the imagination. Somehow ( _somehow_ ) this bothers the Black Paladin _far more_ than the underwear she was wearing five minutes ago. “Absolutely not.”

Shiro clears his throat, doing his absolute best not to stare at Allura’s long legs as she paces around the foot of the bed again. “What about the pink one?”

“ _Which_ pink one?” Allura sighs, folding her arms beneath her bust with a huff. Her eyes meet his (or, rather, her eyes meet his as he glances up from a place he should never have stared so openly at, even for a moment, even if they both know _she did that on purpose she knew what would happen_ ) and she bites her lip in the briefest of smiles before turning back to the chaos of fabric.

“The pink one with the high collar and the embroidered stars.”

Pidge furrows her brows. She doesn’t remember that dress. She’s seen a _lot_ of Allura’s wardrobe, but she’s never seen that one. Keith tilts his head, clearly just as confused as Pidge. But Coran and the Princess both know what he means and a glittering rose pink gown is handed out from the closet in the next moment.

She barely has the dress over her shoulders when she turns around, adjusting the flowing skirt in fistfuls. “Keith, can you braid?”

The Red Paladin blinks for a moment. “Uh, yeah.”

“Perfect. I need you to help Coran with my hair. And Shiro, do Pidge’s makeup.”

The Green Paladin grimaces. “Why do I need makeup?”

Allura clicks her tongue frantically, already shoving the two Paladins over to her bathroom. “Less talking, more eyeliner- and do something about her eyebrows if you can.”

Pidge whips around, glowering ferociously as the door shuts in her face and rounding up to the taller Paladin instead- “ _Do nothing about my eyebrows_.”

Shiro throws his hands up in surrender.

 

“Gimmie that neon green lipstick.”

“Pidge, _no_.”

“Pidge _yes_ ,” she grins, perched on the edge of the counter. Shiro folds his arms across his chest and looks down at her, tapping the slender tube of the Altean equivalent to liquid eyeliner against his bicep rapidly.

“No. Absolutely not, not with your complexion. Just hold still.”

She pouts and sticks out her chin, _valiantly_ resisting the urge to roll her eyes as he sighs and takes her face in one steady hand.

“Wing or no wing?”

“Wing it.”

“As the lady wishes,” the Black Paladin teases softly.

 

Allura is, as always, the picture of beauty. Everything about her gown from the golden trim along the hems to the glittering stars embroidered throughout the skirt is flawlessly arranged, and the large diamond cutout in the chest of it is surprisingly elegant for how much cleavage it shows off. Her curls are woven into a voluminous braid that encircles the back of her head like a halo, a few strands tugged free to frame her face strategically, bouncing as she moves.

Shiro flushes at the sight of her as she adjusts the clasps on the high neck of the dress, stammering something about Keith or Coran or maybe both of them calling him from outside the room. Pidge watches him go with an open roll of her eyes.

Watching Shiro and Allura dance around each other has always been a grand source of entertainment for her, she admits, but _stars above_ how she just wishes they’d just get it over with and get it on already.

She doesn’t see Allura’s eyes tracking Shiro’s backside as he slides out the door, or the way the Princess bites her lip, or the way she jumps when she suddenly remembers she’s not alone.

“Oh, I grabbed something for you, I think it will help add a nice touch to your armor whenever we go planetside for more diplomatic events like this.”

Allura throws a thick, silky jungle green fabric over Pidge’s shoulders, tugging at two corners. One of them has a white metal pendant and she fastens it to the other corner, leaning back to examine her work and settling the cloak with her fingers. She frowns and shifts the clasp until it’s angled sharply over the left side of the Green Paladin’s breastplate.

“There we go,” she nods brightly.

Pidge looks down at the clasp itself and brushes her fingers over it. A flicker from her Lion, a distant memory touches her senses as her fingers trace the abstract green marking- an Altean she remembers vaguely, younger now, preening and smiling so brilliantly he nearly glows as his Lion tells him to adjust the cloak to sit at a more flattering angle. She squeezes it softly and smiles.

“Thank you.” To the Princess for her gift, and to the Lion for her memory. Both of them smile with welcome.

“Shame we can’t do much about your hair,” Allura teases, tugging on a loose air-dried curl with two fingers.

Pidge shrugs. “When it grows out again you can do whatever you want to it.”

Allura’s face lights up and the Green Paladin wonders if she’s going to come to regret that statement.

She gets the feeling she _will_.

 

Shiro and Allura cling to the headrest of her seat as the Green Paladin maneuvers her Lion at a modest amble toward Rhoda- toward the moon named Vllai. She knows it’s sort of the capital here, and that it’s the moon Rhodarians originally come from, but other than that she’s unfortunately a bit blank for information. Coran had tried to condense everything he knew about Rhoda into a five minute speech as the Paladins walked to the Green Lion’s hangar but unfortunately none of it seems to have stuck, and Allura is now trying her best to do the same with everything he forgot to mention.

“Rhodarians are generally rather adverse to physical contact from anyone not very familiar with so when we greet the representative don’t go to shake their hand, that’s very rude- bow at the waist instead. And despite the teeth they’re obligate vegetarians so if they offer you something to eat it won’t be anything moving so it should be perfectly safe. The only appropriate pronouns for a Rhodarian unless informed otherwise are ‘they’. And please-”

Pidge sighs quietly as she steers Green toward the great courtyard Allura had marked on the map, trying her best not to tune out the Altean’s last-minute crash course in interstellar diplomacy. Her Lion rumbles gently in her head.

 ** _I knew a child of Rhoda once,_** she purrs. **_I imagine social customs have not changed so drastically, I can tell you if you’re being rude._**

Pidge doesn’t say it out loud but she huffs and informs her Lion that she is actually in fact rude by default _thankyouverymuch_.

“And Pidge, please, _please_ be polite,” Allura sighs, folding her arms and giving the girl in the pilot’s chair a careful but amused look. “I don’t need an interstellar incident because you made a thoughtless quip about someone’s strange hairstyle or bad breath or something.”

“I’ll try, Allura.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“But then again, not everyone is you,” she teases. “I mean, I made _one little sleep-deprived quip_ and you threw food in my face. In terms of social faux pas I’m pretty sure yours was worse than mine.”

Allura pinches the skin where the Green Paladin’s neck and shoulder meet, laughing as Pidge squeaks and slaps her hand away.

“I almost hate to say it but she has a point,” Shiro smiles, and the Princess rounds a playful lip-quivering pout on him.

“Allura you’re going to break him,” Pidge snickers, and this time its Shiro giving her a pinch.

“Do _not_ pinch the driver,” she squawks, smacking his hand. “I _will_ crash this Lion _on purpose_ and I _will_ kill us all.”

 

The Green Lion lands to surprisingly little fanfare in the open field-like courtyard Pidge was directed toward. She can see figures off in the distance pausing to stare, but they move on rather quickly and carry on with their days. It’s strange. Not bad strange, just strange. She’s used to getting a little more attention. But then, the Yellow Lion has been here for a long while now, surely the novelty has worn off.

The Paladin settles her Lion into a comfortable sphynx position, running her thumb gently over the controls as she slips away and back into her own body.

Allura strides out of the Lion confidently, the skirts of her shimmering pink gown rustling behind her as her spine straightens and her shoulders spread with effortless authority. The golden embroidery flashes and glitters in the light. Pidge tries to imitate the posture as she hurries out after her, feeling odd in her armor next to the Princess in her sleek dress. She feels even odder being shorter than the Princess but clearly serving as one of her protectors. Then again, Allura hardly needs protecting…

Hell, on the training deck Pidge needs protecting _from_ Allura.

Shiro too, though he seems to actually enjoy it when she hands him his own ass.

Pidge tries not to think about that one too hard.

The representative meets them halfway and bows deeply, surprising Pidge with their willowy figure as they tower over Allura. They glance up with five brilliant golden eyes placed in an almost floral arrangement around their face and Pidge’s heart stops in her chest as she remembers- _her face inches from an alien skull, too many empty eye holes glowing unnaturally with her light_.

She blinks away the memory and exhales slowly, plastering on a careful smile as she pulls off her helmet, tucks it under one arm, bows at the waist and looks up through her bangs in an imitation of the Rhodarian. The representative to the High Council of Rhoda smiles brightly at her ( _sharp teeth broken, lower jaw split in half_ ) as they right themselves and the Green Lion purrs softly in the back of her mind. Pidge nudges Green gently, letting her know she appreciates the comfort.

“My name is T’Phera, Radiant Princess,” they nod to each in turn, “Black Paladin, and Green Paladin, and I will be your escort. Long have we awaited your arrival. Your Yellow Paladin has spoken of you all ceaselessly since he arrived.”

“I apologize for our sudden and unexpected arrival, and I thank you deeply for your generous hospitality,” Allura smiles as she folds her hands carefully together behind her back. There’s a steady, not _quite_ musical cadence to her words. “I imagine my Paladin has already done such many times in your care.”

“He has not stopped in his graciousness.”

The Princess giggles softly, the sound delicate and controlled.

“Come,” T’Phera gestures with long clawed hands, “he is staying at the capitol hospital. After he recovered from his injuries, he insisted on staying for the children. The children there adore both his company and his stories, and,” they smile, face quirking in confused amusement, “he also said something about the food being better than anything he had ever eaten in a hospital on his home planet. I presume such a statement is flattery- we all cherish the cuisines from home above all others.”

“If Hunk says it, it’s true,” Pidge snorts. “And I can vouch for the hospital food.”

“The Yellow Paladin is known to speak from the heart,” Allura nods, following the representative’s long strides with ease. “It is in his nature to be sincere in his words. Deception is not a skill one of the Yellow Lion can attain easily.” Allura glances back at Pidge, giving her a very _blunt_ teasing look.

 _You know what_ , Pidge admits she’s good at deception. It’s her thing. She’s not ashamed.

She sticks out her tongue when Allura looks away.

Shiro’s left hand slaps the back of her head and she nearly stumbles.

When she pouts at him he cocks one brow at her before shaking his head, his own black-violet cloak billowing behind him as he follows the Princess and the Rhodarian representative.

 

The hospital looks almost like a palace more than anything, sprawling and towering and surprisingly beautiful with curling and intricate architecture. Shades of subdued blues and greens weave through the building, accented with sharp gold that catches the midday sunshine and sparkles beautifully. The towering glass doors to the main lobby recede in either direction in a languid rolling motion, the golden inlay swirling as the rounded entry opens.

Allura’s step pauses at a vase filled to overflowing with shining iridescent blossoms, catching a few petals in her fingers for a moment. She tugs gently on one curling petal with glazed eyes, a tiny, bitter smile tugging at her lips. She doesn’t tear her gaze from the blooms when she speaks.

“You go on ahead, Pidge. We’ll be right there.”

The Green Paladin nods and turns on her heel, following after a nurse entering what she hopes is an elevator with a noticeable spring in her stride as her little legs work overtime to keep up with their long stride.

Allura lets her breath out in a tired sigh, turning to T’Phera slowly.

“I believe you have information for us.”

They nod, brushing their shoulder-length black hair back behind one ear. “There is much you need to know, Princess, Paladin. Much has happened in the ten thousand years you have been gone. I feel it is best if we sit.”

 

“The room at the end of the hall,” the nurse smiles, a display of sharp teeth that makes Pidge cringe on the inside before she reminds herself, and the Green Paladin inclines her head lightly in thanks. It takes everything she has not to sprint, walking calmly if quickly and with a vigorous bounce in her step as she gets closer to a familiar voice.

Hunk is sitting cross-legged on the edge of a large hospital bed with several young wide-eyed Rhodarian children all wearing shimmering flower crowns and crowding around him as he retells some adventure from their months fighting as Voltron, gesturing wildly with his hands and putting on voices as he starts to imitate the other Paladins and the Alteans. A strange animal is curled up in the lap of one of the kids, shifting to stick six little white paws in the air as the young Rhodarian strokes its pelt. His audience is almost breathlessly entranced.

Pidge feels herself grinning as she leans against the open door, tilting her head and watching as he loses himself in the story the way he always does. She’d hate to interrupt the moment; she’s waited this long, she can wait a little longer. A nurse behind him gestures to her and she waves, and the movement catches the eye of the Paladin in the room.

He glances up and freezes and his story comes to a screeching halt.

He looks like he’s seen a ghost. Like he’s _seeing_ one.

“ _Pidge_?”

She doesn’t give him the chance to even try to finish that train of thought and crashes right into him. Pidge wraps her arms as far as they can go around his big barrel chest and squeezes with every ounce of her strength, burying her face in his chest to hide the happy tears brimming in her eyes. In return Hunk embraces her, drowns her in his arms, his maelstrom of emotions, and holds her until she feels like she’s going to burst under the pressure. She doesn’t know when her feet stopped touching the ground and she doesn’t _care damnit_.

“I missed you, you jerk,” she sniffles, nuzzling his chest shamelessly and radiating affection. She doesn’t care about whoever else is in the room. It doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. “I’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you.”

“I tried to follow you,” he murmurs, his voice low and strangled in his throat. Pidge feels the air escape her lungs in a shallow gasp- is he crying? _Why is he crying_? “I tried to follow you, follow Green. There was a wave- a jolt in the wormhole- when we were falling- I saw you hit the ceiling, Pidge. You stopped… Yellow and I tried to catch you.”

She can see it, she can feel it, simmering at the edges of his mind- she can see her own body slam into the ceiling of her Lion, hear her own screams cut short, see herself fall outside the range of the screen. The overwhelming fear…

“ _What_?”

“You don’t remember?”

She shakes her head. She remembers falling from the Castle, and she remembers waking up near Kerberos. For better or for worse she doesn’t remember anything in the space in between. Though she certainly had an _idea_ before now…

“Everyone was screaming, and I was trying to focus, I was trying to _think_ , and there was blood everywhere, a crystal came loose and got me in the side, the face, and then you- you _stopped_ screaming. I heard you slam into the ceiling and you stopped… you stopped screaming Pidge. You fell. You both fell. I couldn’t see you.” He holds her closer and all of her bones creak in protest under the strain. She sees flashes of his memory, feels flashes of that distant moment in the swirling chaos. “I was so _scared_ , Pidge.”

Oh _stars_.

“I’m so sorry, Hunk.” She grabs the back of his shirt in fistfuls, nuzzling closer as her throat closes up with shame. “I’m so sorry…”

The Yellow Paladin gives her one last, suffocating squeeze before setting her back on her feet, smiling and rubbing the heel of his hand against his eyes.

“I’m just glad you’re alright.”

Suddenly they are reminded they’re not the only people in the room.

“Is this the Green Paladin?” One of the Rhodarian children chirps, glancing between the two humans. “They are so _small_.” Pidge feels a flush of embarrassment riding up the back of her neck as the young kids, clearly so much younger than herself but painfully close to her size, crowd around her.

“ _She_ , young one, _she_ , remember what the Yellow Paladin said,” the nurse hums gently, flicking at the child’s long ear as they pass. They give Pidge an apologetic expression. “Sorry, Paladin; on Rhoda we don’t really have the same kinds of gender concepts other species do, so for younglings learning different pronouns can be… difficult.”

“But this one has no problem with ‘they’,” another child, smaller, with wide violet eyes, squawks indignantly as they point to Hunk. The Yellow Paladin shrugs contentedly.

The nurse sighs quietly; “Then that is for _them_ to decide, is it not?”

“It’s alright Vera,” Hunk smiles, “as they say, ‘when in Rome’…”

The nurse’s five fuchsia eyes narrow slightly confusion, a bemused smile tugging at their mouth. “I am beginning to suspect your idioms will never translate properly, Paladin.”

Hunk sighs. “As am I, Vera.”

Pidge turns to the young Rhodarian with a shrug and a smile. “I don’t mind ‘they’, either, if that’s what you’d like to call me.”

The little kid’s eyes light up and they turn to Hunk, stage whispering- “ _They are nicer than you said they would be_.”

Pidge clutches at her heart playfully with a gasp of mock-offense as she rounds on the Yellow Paladin. The last residual sniffles of sincerity from the reunion add a touch of flair to her words.

“Hunk, do you think I’m-” sniffle “- _mean_?”

“I’m not going to answer that, Pidge.” He crosses his arms and looks away stubbornly. The tips of his ears take on a lovely red tint and his longer hair swings in a ponytail behind his head. It’s grown out quite a bit lately.

It looks good on him.

There’s a flash of something distinctly feline low in the back of her mind, and _then_ a flicker from her Lion she doesn’t recognize, but Pidge shrugs it off.

“You’ve been telling all these wonderful people,” she grins widely as the children pick up on her teasing and start to ‘ooh’ softly at the engineer, “that I’m _mean_? Hunk, _how could you_?”

“Yes, Hunk,” the child with violet eyes chirps playfully, “how could you say your _laharota_ is mean?”

“Pidge is my _friend_ , not my _laharota_ ,” Hunk quirks one brow carefully at the little Rhodarian.

“But-”

“Social customs where we are from are different.”

If Pidge knows stubborn children (and she _does_ , she takes pride in her childhood stubbornness) she knows that the Rhodarian child isn’t buying what Hunk is selling but they _are_ at least willing to stop talking about it for now. The fact that a word doesn’t translate gives her pause.

“Wait, laharota?”

“It’s an old word, I think the literal translation is love mate?”

The children all giggle into their hands and the same one who accused Pidge of being Hunk’s laharota pipes up again. “Your _laharota_ is the beloved match of your soul.”

Pidge turns a positively _radioactive_ shade of red.

So laharota is just a fancy old Rhodarian word that means soulmate. Good to know.

“I did not know your species could change colors,” the nurse, Vera, laughs lightly.

“Not on purpose we can’t,” Pidge grumbles.

“In any case,” Vera smiles, bright pink eyes soft and knowing, “I’m afraid the children have to return to their rooms now. It’s nearly time for the midday meal.”

The children groan in a familiar chorus that makes Pidge snicker and the nurse starts to shoo them out of the room. Pidge feels a light tapping on her shoulder and turns. A young Rhodarian with closely-cropped ink black hair and wide doe eyes places their flower crown on Pidge’s head gently, smiling shyly as they back away.

There’s a moment where the scaly silver fingers brush against her scalp and she feel her Lion perk forward in curiosity, almost reaching as if to smell as the Rhodarian pulls away. Hunk smiles knowingly.

“Apparently the old Paladins used to take Apprentices when they were getting close to retirement,” he nods quietly as the child skips off down the hall. “The Lions can sense potential candidates, high in quintessence and suited to a particular element. If I had to guess from the look on your face, I’d say Deera there was a good potential for the Green Lion.”

Pidge tilts her head curiously.

“Yellow told me, after she felt one of the kids here resonate with her.” He crosses his arms. “Somehow I doubt we’ll be taking apprentices any time soon though, so whether any of the kids here have potential doesn’t matter much.”

“Especially since they’re _kids_ ,” Pidge points out. The Yellow Paladin shrugs half-heartedly.

“So are we. I mean, Pidge, you like just turned fourteen. That’s a little insane.”

“Fifteen.”

His eyebrows slam into his hairline and he looks down at her. “ _Since when_?”

“A month ago, roughly. I think I gotta check how long it’s been…”

“No, Pidge, I thought your birthday was in _December_. It was around exam time, we celebrated it and everything.”

“Oh, no. That was my dog’s birthday,” she laughs. “Are you kidding? I wasn’t going to use my real birthday to be Gunderson. I was undercover, remember?”

He ruffles her hair, careful of the flowers. “You never told me you had a dog, I love dogs.”

Pidge laughs as she pushes his hand off. “Aren’t you allergic to dogs?”

“Only a little.”

“No, no,” she smiles, “I remember, Lance said you swell up like a balloon every time you pet a dog, I remember that, we were studying for the end of semester exams that day. He spent like half of it trying to get a spoon to stick to his nose and _still_ somehow managed to ace all of his exams.”

The Yellow Paladin bites his lip, laughing as silently as he can at the shared memory, and Pidge feels a flush of pride at getting him to laugh.

“I thought you were going to dissect him after you found out, you were so _mad_.”

She folds her arms over her chest with a sniff. “I was _baffled_ , Hunk, there’s a _difference_.”

“… You know you’re not denying the dissection part Pidge.”

“No, no I am not.”

Hunk just exhales with a wide grin.

“Ok so back to the dogs- maybe I have a problem,” Hunk pouts playfully and folds his arms. “But can you blame me? Dogs are awesome. And allergy medication is a thing that exists. How is our Lance anyway? Driving you up the wall, I imagine.”

Pidge bites her lip and looks at the doorway. The Yellow Paladin’s voice takes on a pained, soft undertone and he lowers his head as he speaks.

“Pidge? How’s Lance?”

“No idea,” she shrugs weakly. “We, uh, we haven’t found him yet…”

There’s a moment of painful, gut-wrenching silence before Hunk speaks again, and his voice is soft but carefully, deliberately light.

“Well, if I know Lance, _and I do_ , he’s probably off chasing mermaids and having the time of his life,” he sighs. “He’ll be so disappointed when we show up to ruin his fun.”

Pidge pauses, propping her hands on her hips. “… Mermaids probably are real, aren’t they?”

“I mean, yeah, probably.”

“That must mean other mythological creatures are real too, like mothman and kelpies and the chupacabra- do you think humans are cryptids on other planets?”

“Oh no Pidge, not this…”

“Oh man this is so cool I can’t wait to meet a yeti.”

“Oh jeeze, Pidge, not the conspiracy stuff again, now is not the time for cryptids.”

She elbows him with a bright, teasing smile. “It is literally always time for cryptids. The truth is out there, Hunk.”

Hunk sighs again, shaking his head as he takes in the smaller Paladin. “You know, until that night on the roof I sometimes wondered if the only reason you were even at the academy was to chase… conspiracy theories… about aliens _oh my gosh that’s the only reason you were there at all wasn’t it_ …”

She shrugs shamelessly as the Yellow Paladin cradles his face in his hands. “More or less. I mean, after I got banned and threatened with charges of treason, anyway. I was going to be part of that class one way or another but then there was Kerberos and you know, so… yeah, yeah chasing conspiracy theories was a really big part of it but Hunk, _I was right_.”

He looks up through his fingers, brows pinching together. “You _were_ right… Pidge you were _right_ …”

“I _was_ right,” she grins, squaring her shoulders and puffing up with pride. “I was right- and look at us now.”

“Uncountable miles from home and risking certain death on a near daily basis while fighting in an interstellar war older than our species’ ability to write. Yeah, wow, look at that. That was a step up right there. _Thank you_ Pidge.”

“Okay, _rude_ ,” Pidge snorts. “I can’t believe I missed your attitude.”

“ _My_ attitude?” Hunk looks downright scandalized. “Pidge, do you even hear yourself when you speak?”

“I never said I _wasn’t_ a sassy little shit, I’m just saying…”

“Language, Pidge,” Shiro groans, sticking his head around the corner. A delighted look flits across the Black Paladin’s face when he notices the flower crown adorning her head and she bristles.

“ _Don’t you dare_.”

The Black Paladin gives her a cheshire grin. “I didn’t say anything.”

Hunk hands Pidge the helmet she must have dropped at one point, shaking his head. “So you’re all here to pick me up then?”

“Among other things. Allura’s finishing talks with the Rhodarian ambassador, we’re looking at using their allies as a roadmap for building a more cohesive alliance. Most of them have been contacted by the High Council here already and there are plans to stop by their worlds soon and meet with them in person. There’s more to it but I’d hate to bore you with the details,” he says, giving Pidge a very pointed look. She sticks out her tongue.

“Ok, well, Yellow’s a little way out of town and I just have to say goodbye to all the kids here first. I’d hate to disappear on them.”

Shiro nods. “Of course, Hunk. Take your time. We’ll see you back on the Castle.”

Pidge gives the Yellow Paladin one last hug before following Shiro out of the room. He leans over, whispering in a low voice as they get to the intricately decorated elevators.

“Adorable.”

_WHACK_

“Ow.”

 

It only took the promise that the Red Lion would rat Keith out if he tried to hide to convince him to wait with Pidge in the hallway just outside the Yellow Lion’s hangar for Hunk to arrive, arms crossed and a nervous frown painted over his face as one leg bounces with nervous energy. Shiro and Allura had said something about needing to talk to Coran, so it’s just the two youngest inhabitants of the Castle waiting for Yellow and her Paladin. The familiar sound of giant bay doors closing and locking into place alerts them to the return of a Lion and they enter the hangar with varying amounts of bounce and anxiety.

When he sees them Hunk embraces Keith in a bear hug so rough that the Red Paladin wheezes like a crushed rubber duck and it takes every ounce of self-control Pidge has not to burst out laughing at the noise.

“I missed you dude.”

Keith coughs as he’s set back down on solid ground and given the chance to catch his breath and he stares up at the taller teenager in wide-eyed disbelief.

“Just… Just like that? No questions…?”

“You’re still _you_ , aren’t you?”

Keith gives him a look and nods, like he’s not sure who else he could be. Hunk only gives him a radiant smile.

“Then I don’t have _that many_ questions.”

Hunk shoots a look between the two arms of Voltron and smiles.

“Wanna see something cool?”

 

“I was actually about to go off on my own in a couple Rhodarian days when you guys showed up. I was getting kind of impatient and the Council insisted I take as many resources as necessary. ‘ _The least they could do for one of the Paladins of Voltron_ ’ and all that.” He waves around to the stacks and stacks of boxes and supplies that fill the entire inside of the massive Lion. They pick their way through to the forward part of the Lion carefully. “Most of this is packaged for long term, not a lot of perishables like fresh fruits, but it’s surprisingly good so it’s not like I can complain. These people are huge on seasonings so dinner might actually have some flavor from now on. In fact they’re one of the only other sentient species with a decent tolerance for capsasin besides humans so that means we’re getting spicy from now on.”

Keith grimaces. “Pass on the spicy.”

“No stomach for hot food?” Hunk tilts his head, pulling open one of the boxes. He grabs a few bottles out from inside it and twists them open, handing them off to the other Paladins. Pidge sniffs at hers before taking a light sip.

“Not really.”

Hunk shrugs and takes a long swig. “Galra apparently don’t have much palate for it either, so I can’t exactly say I’m surprised. I’m just surprised you actually look the part now.”

“Wait, wait,” Keith puts up one hand, setting down his drink on a box beside him. “You already figured I was part-Galra? _How_?”

The cheekiest grin stretches over Hunk’s face and he preens a little. “Remember back on the Balmera?”

“Yeah?”

“Those hand-pads for all the locks were programmed to only work for Galra and for Galra-tech, I figured that out pretty fast,” Hunk nods, “so when Lance told me afterwards about you putting your hand on the hand print and the bay doors closing, well… I figured maybe there was more to you than we knew about. It seemed pretty obvious, actually.”

Keith takes a slow swig of his drink, shaking his head slowly. “Do you just know everything?”

“I try.”

Pidge pipes up curiously. “So that raises an interesting question; how did you guess I was girl?”

“You made that really easy, Pidge,” Hunk chuckles. “Mostly it was that day in gym where the coach said you ran like a girl-”

“And I said if he ran a little faster, so could he, ok yeah that… that’s fair. That’s on me. That was not subtle. To be fair though I was going on like forty minutes of sleep that day.”

Keith snorts. “I wish I could say I was surprised. Also, what is this? This is amazing.”

“It’s some kind of berry cider, I think,” Hunk says, tilting the already half-empty bottle of bubbling neon purple drink in his hand. “I don’t think that it’s alcoholic, but it might be? If it is it’s like really really _really_ weak. I mean they let kids drink it so it’s probably not alcoholic.”

Something shifts behind them and Hunk pales noticeably.

There’s another shuffling sound, and Keith turns his head. One ear flickers. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Hunk laughs, leg bouncing nervously. “Probably just nothing.”

“No, no I heard something,” the Red Paladin murmurs as he looks over his shoulder. Pidge glances around too, listening carefully. There’s another faint shuffle from somewhere deep in the Yellow Lion and they both spring up on the defensive.

“It’s nothing, really. Guys, guys come on it’s nothing,” Hunk calls as Keith and Pidge start slowly making their way through the Lion. “It’s nothing I promise.”

Keith makes a very manly sound of surprise (it was not, in fact, a ‘shriek of terror’, _thank you Pidge_ ) when a massive blur of indigo fur tackles him to the floor a moment later. The Yellow Paladin groans softly.

“ _Ah quiznak_ …”

“Hunk,” Keith manages through gritted teeth. “Explain. _Now_.”

Stretched across Keith’s body is a large rumbling animal with six legs and long ears that looks eerily like a large housecat, if housecats could grow to the size of a large working dog and come in shades of indigo and violet. The animal tilts its head at the Red Paladin and slowly narrows its four dark eyes, resting its chin on its front paws over his chest.

“ _Help me_.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Hunk pleads, a nervous smile on his face, “they won’t hurt you. Pumpkin here is totally harmless.”

Pidge groans. “Oh Hunk, no, don’t tell me you named it already.”

He shrugs awkwardly. “… I haven’t _settled_ on a name, exactly…”

Pidge turns to Keith still pinned beneath the alien cat with a look of tired acceptance on her face. His expression is slightly… _less_ accepting. “Well, I guess we have a space cat now… Who’s gonna tell Shiro?”

The arms of Voltron don’t even hesitate.

“Not it.”

“Not it.”

“Mreh,” the space cat in question grunts with them, looking awfully pleased with itself.

“Oh come on, I couldn’t leave them behind, they’ve grown so attached to me,” Hunk pleads. “Look, look; c’mere kitty. Come here.”

The animal perks up and tilts its head at Hunk as if considering, a long forked tail swaying across the floor behind it, but apparently it decides better of it and settles its head back on Keith’s chest. The very tip of a light blue-grey tongue pokes out of its mouth in a delicate little blep.

“We’re still working on commands, you have to understand,” the Yellow Paladin sighs.

Pidge drops into a squat and opens her arms, clicking her tongue. The space cat pops up and strides over to her, rubbing its head over her face and accidentally pushing her over. Keith sits up the moment he’s released from the animal’s insistent cuddle and backs toward the wall.

“I’m still not telling Shiro about this,” Pidge laughs as the animal puts one paw on her shoulder, rubbing its cheek over her face. She settles one hand on the back of its head to give it a scratch. It leans back to look at her and she blinks in surprise- she could have sworn it had dark eyes a minute ago, but now they’re distinctly hazel.

“Pidge come on, please, I thought we were friends.”

“Oh no, not a chance,” she laughs. “This is _your_ problem.”

“ _Hunk_ ,” Shiro’s distant voice calls, “ _Keith, Pidge, are you in here_?”

The space cat swivels to the sound of the voice, ears pricked and tail twitching excitedly.

“Oh boy,” Keith sighs, watching casually as the animal darts across the Lion. He watches it go past with a smile on his face. “This is gonna be good.”

“Guys come on,” Hunk groans, “help me catch them.”

Pidge and Keith exchange a look. “Nah.”

“ _Oh come on guys_.”

“I’m not a guy,” Pidge announces, striding for the exit after the animal, “so clearly he must not mean me.”

“I’m not even human,” Keith shrugs, keeping pace beside her, “so he definitely can’t mean me.”

“ _GUYS COME ON_.”

 

Outside the Lion Allura is kneeling on the floor, laughing and pushing at the large animal as it rubs its face against hers in a friendly if particularly rough head-butting motion. The look on Shiro’s face is one of complete exhaustion.

“Where did you come from, little treeca?”

“Treeca?”

“My mother had one of these,” Allura smiles as she scratches the animal, the treeca behind one long ear. It rumbles and leans into her touch happily. “It was a gift from an ambassador. They’re excellent companion animals. Very intuitive. When she died her treeca stopped eating, as if it knew she was gone. Poor thing wasted away waiting for her to come home…”

Shiro gives the Princess a gentle squeeze on her shoulder.

The treeca chirps at her and she grabs its cheeks in both hands, making faces as it tries to lick her.

“Apparently Hunk couldn’t leave it behind,” Keith announces dryly, earning a scorned look from Hunk and a snort from Pidge as Shiro’s shoulders droop.

“I certainly have no complaints about keeping a friendly little treeca on the Castle,” Allura rounds on the Black Paladin, openly _daring_ him with mischievously twinkling eyes, “do _you_ , Shiro?”

The treeca seems to understand what she’s doing and turns its four now aquamarine eyes on the eldest Paladin, staring up at him intently.

Pidge wants to bottle up and savor the pained look that swims across the Black Paladin’s face as Allura flutters her lashes, smiling at him in that way that he’s never been able to deny.

“I do not,” he manages, looking delightfully bitter. He rounds on the younger Paladins with a stern expression. “As long as I’m not the one responsible for feeding it and walking it and everything else. I’m _not_ cleaning out a giant kitty litter box.”

“Hunk will handle everything,” Pidge announces as she deftly throws the Yellow Paladin under the bus. “Space Cat is his cat anyway.”

She feels a shoulder bump hers; Keith may be wearing his best neutral expression but he’s laughing on the inside.

Hunk looks downright betrayed and she throws her arms up.

“What? This was not my idea-”

“For once,” Keith interrupts, but she keeps talking as if she never heard him.

“-I had exactly _nothing_ to do with this.”

Shiro just groans and rubs at his face with one hand, murmuring faint prayers under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That thing where Pidge told the gym teacher to run like a girl was not nearly as polite as she made it sound. Lance almost died laughing that day. It was the most words Pidge had said in a day since he and Hunk had met Pidge and they were used to get them all a week of detention. It was actually the middle finger for emphasis that got the detention, but you know…
> 
> “Gunderson, you run like a girl!”  
> *Pidge turns around, starts jogging backwards. Looks like she’s never even heard of sleep.*  
> “And maybe if you run a little faster, so can you-” *middle finger* “-SIR.”
> 
> Hunk was absolutely horrified but Lance was laughing so hard he was crying and wheezing on the floor. (I know I would have been.) It really is impressive she never got found out.
> 
> Shiro is bitter about the treeca because Keith did that shit before and got Shiro in a ton of trouble with his landlords. Never mind that at least once he brought him a fucking coyote that just happened to be friendly.
> 
> Also the treeca slash Space Cat is probably utterly ridiculous but I liked the idea, and irissteth over on tumblr helped me out with it. Originally the whole reason Bora's cat was pregnant in the first place was so the Paladins could have kittens if I decided against a more alien pet because I am a cat person at heart. The eye thing it does is how it says 'I like you'; by adopting your eye color it's saying it likes you. 
> 
> Keith is not a fan. Which doesn't matter because like a normal cat Space Cat adores him and there is no escape now.
> 
> I saved all of the comments I got on the last update for yesterday and it was so worth the wait, made my birthday ten times better. You all are amazing and I love you and my face still hurts from smiling. I hope you all keep enjoying this story.


	29. Dark Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dark matter may not be visible, but it still has influence on the space around it. The effects of it can be seen even when it itself cannot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, this new diet I got put on has completely sapped my energy. It takes way too much effort getting words out of me than it did before and my sleep schedule / ability to sleep has gone completely to hell. I mean it works, don't get me wrong, it's just draining.
> 
> On that note, if you have any really good food blogs you can recommend please throw them at me.
> 
> Also it looks like there are a lot of new readers within the last couple updates, to whom I say- are you not at least a little intimidated by the size of this thing? I mean jeeze, I look at this and I'm wondering how the hell I did this. Also why, where did you come from, why is this happening. I'm not complaining, just confused and eternally grateful.
> 
> Last chapter felt a little shitposty in places, so does this one to a much smaller degree, but we're leading up to some less than happy stuff coming up soon so I think that's fair. There's a chapter coming up that is probably going to earn me a good punch in the nose.
> 
> Thank you all so much for being the amazing people you are and your comments continue to be like sunshine in my soul, honestly I should probably just like start printing them out so I can keep them in a notebook with me forever it's amazing. Anyway, please enjoy.

“You ever gonna take off the flower crown?”

The Green Paladin glances up from her lunch, pursing her lips thoughtfully. She at least takes the time to finish the bite in her mouth before speaking.

“Oh, yeah I should probably do that,” Pidge nods, setting her fork on her plate and sliding her thumbs between the flowers and her hair, wrapping her fingers carefully over the woven circle and pulling-

Pulling-

 _Pulling_ -

Well shit.

The flower crown has woven itself into her hair. While she wasn’t paying attention the stems of the blossoms seemed to grow just from their proximity to her and wove themselves into a secure braid against themselves and through her shaggy locks. She’d probably be much more impressed by this were they not currently tangled in her already barely-manageable hair.

Hunk is staring with open bafflement, while Keith is doing his best not to look at her _at all_ , covering his mouth with one fist and coughing.

“Don’t you fucking laugh, Keith, don’t you fucking _dare_.”

His voice cracks painfully- “ _I didn’t do anything_.”

“This isn’t funny,” she pouts as she tugs fruitlessly at the flowers. With every pull the flowers seem more stubborn in their clinging and she could swear she feels them holding on tighter. “Seriously guys, they’re not coming out. This isn’t funny.”

 ** _You are right,_** Green rumbles sweetly in her head. **_It is hilarious. I was wondering how long it would be until you were graced with a crown of flora. Your predecessor hated this aspect of belonging to me nearly as much as you seem to. He threatened constantly to trade me for another Lion. And floral adornments are so common in the cosmos, often traditional and of great cultural importance; I’m afraid you might have to get used to this lest you seem rude and ungrateful._**

‘Afraid’ nothing, the Green Lion is on the verge of hysterics right now. Her composure is a _lie_. The Green Paladin has half a mind to drop-kick the Lion out of her brain entirely.

“Oh _shut up_ ,” she pouts, letting her arms fall slack at her sides. The others give her curious looks. “Green thinks it’s funny.”

“I mean, it kind of is, Pidge.”

“ _Hunk_ ,” she gasps, betrayed.

He gives her a very pointed look, smirking lightly at her. “Would you not be laughing if it was me or Keith in your position?”

“That- that- _that’s not the point_ ,” she growls, slumping back in her chair with a groan. “That’s not the point here.”

“Then what _is_ the point?” Keith shakes his head, taking another bite from his plate. Whatever Hunk whipped up is probably best compared to tempura vegetables, thinly sliced and lightly battered, then fried in an oil that has a surprisingly sweet note underneath the almost sesame flavor. The whole thing is plated on an Altean grain that looks like an odd hybrid between rice and couscous and smells a little like rosemary and a lot like ginger. Hunk had nearly done backflips when they’d told him about the greenhouse and all the non-goo foods they could now utilize.

To be fair, Pidge and Keith would have dreaded coming back to the Castle just as much if they’d been thoroughly wined and dined by an entire alien species for weeks on end.

“Forest power sucks ass, that’s what.”

A nip of pressure in her skull, like teeth pinching the side of her grey matter. She slaps her Lion back.

“I can get scissors?” Hunk offers with a shrug. Pidge recoils in horror.

“ _Absolutely not_. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken just to get my hair _this_ long?” She gestures to the just barely shoulder-length waves frantically. “I used to have hair down to my ass, Hunk. _My ass_.”

Keith rolls his eyes and raises one hand, wiggling the fingers lightly. “Claws, then? I’m less likely to get any of your hair on accident.”

She purses her lips and sinks down into her own shoulders with a sigh. “ _Acceptable_.”

 ** _Such a grumpy little cub. It’s only a mane,_** Green teases.

Pidge grimaces.

The Red Paladin sets his fork on his plate and pushes it across the table, getting up to stand behind her. A slight bit of pressure where vines are tugged and hair moves with them. He purses his lips and tilts his head, pulling carefully at the foliage.

“I can _feel_ you laughing, asshole.”

Keith flicks the back of her head.

“Do you want my help or not?”

She growls but stays firmly in place, one leg bouncing impatiently. Hunk chuckles and rolls his eyes- the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“You know, we should have a team sleepover tonight on the Bridge. We haven’t done one of those in forever.”

“That actually sounds like a great idea, Hunk,” Keith nods, applying pressure to one stem with a careful claw. It bows under before slicing open with a thin stream of sap smearing into Pidge’s hair as she whines in soft horror. “I’m in. Pidge?”

“After I shower, yes.”

 

“Hey Pidge have you seen my _\- is that my shirt_?”

Pidge glances down at the cozy piece of fabric she’s currently drowning in, a shirt so long the sleeves hang uselessly past her hands and the hemline reaches down to her knees. She brushes a few half-dry strands of hair behind one ear slowly.

“… No?”

Now to be fair she had gotten used to wearing everyone else’s clothes as a comfort thing, _and it wasn’t just her_ \- Keith did it too. The two of them had gotten into the habit of wearing someone else’s shirt or jacket whenever they started to miss them, and they had argued more than once on the days where both of them missed Shiro who got to wear it first. Keith pulled the duckling card more times than Pidge cared to count to win those arguments.

Allura had once threatened that if they didn’t decide soon she would stuff them both into the shirt at the same time. To be fair, she was _exhausted_ at the time.

“… _I can explain_.”

“Can you now?”

Pidge rounds on the Paladin leaning casually on the wall. “Are you here to help us move Hunk’s stuff into his new room or are you just here to be an ass?”

“Oh the second one, definitely,” he nods, buffing his nails on his shirt.

If Pidge rolls her eyes and mouths the words ‘why me’ at the ceiling, it goes unaddressed.

“In any case,” she sighs, turning back to Hunk, “I forgot I’d borrowed it, I’ll change out after we drop off the first round of stuff.”

Hunk hands her a box so heavy she nearly tips into the wall and she stumbles to catch herself.

“You sure you can handle that?”

“I dunno, I might need some help-”

“She can’t,” Keith coughs from behind her, the teasing smirk on his face invisible to her. “She’s got weak girl muscles.”

Pidge immediately straightens, puffing out her chest and scowling viciously, suddenly perfectly capable of handling the box, and quite probably four more if her righteous fury has its way. Keith rolls his eyes fondly and pats the seething teenager on the back, taking a box of his own from the Yellow Paladin struggling to muffle his snickering.

“And that’s how you get her to carry shit.”

 

“Oh, I finished your stand mixer, I hope you don’t mind. I needed something to do the other night since I couldn’t sleep and it just needed like the last ten percent and I was in the kitchen anyway so I just took care of it for you, I used all your notes and everything.”

Hunk shines that radiant smile her way and she feels a light flutter in her ribs that makes her _deeply_ suspicious. “No that’s totally cool, thanks Pidge.”

“Yeah it’s in my lab, we can just pop in and grab it real quick on the way.”

“You have a lab?”

“My old room is my lab now.”

He laughs. “Pidge it was always your lab.”

She pauses. “I mean, _yeah_. But it’s official now. I don’t sleep in it anymore. Mostly…”

They take a quick detour before the elevator, the door sliding open when Pidge presses her forehead on the scanning pad.

“What?”

“… Isn’t that for hands?”

“I reprogrammed it to accept my forehead too,” she shrugs, setting the stuff unceremoniously on her chair. “More sanitary than my tongueprint, and practical for when my hands are full- like just now.”

“Fair enough.”

“Now, it should be over in this corner,” she bites her lip, shuffling carefully over to where she’s pretty sure the bed used to be. “Somewhere…”

“What is this? What happened? _What did you do_?” Pidge glances up in confusion at the high pitch to Hunk’s voice, grinning when she sees him gesturing to the two faint but still noticeable humanoid-shaped burn outlines on the far wall. She thumps her fist to her chest lightly as she clears her throat.

“Now, to be fair,” she gestures with one hand, “had I known Keith was chewing gum at the time I would have told him to leave the lab.”

Hunk looks downright horrified. “ _That doesn’t answer any of my questions Pidge_.”

She shrugs. “I know.”

She’s lucky she still has eyebrows after that. Though, on the upside, she is now a firm believer in proper lab eye-wear because of it. Before she could take it or leave it, but now… What Hunk and his dramatic mother hen anxieties droning on for weeks and months could not accomplish, the Red Paladin could with only some gum and an errant bubble.

That was a _fun_ day.

 

She sets the last box on the bed, tilting her head at the papers on the top. Written out in Hunk’s tidy scrawl is an oddly familiar wall of text.

“Is this…” she pauses, picking up the stack slowly. “Is this what I think it is?”

Hunk stiffens noticeably, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Depends.”

“Did you memorize an entire Dungeons and Dragons rulebook?”

“… Depends.”

Pidge starts bouncing in place on the balls of her feet, clutching the papers to her chest. “Hunk _holy shit_ we have to play sometime.”

“Then yes, yes I did.”

“What’d you play?”

Hunk grins. “I’m insulted you even have to ask me that. A Holy Paladin, obviously. Granted the race was unconventional- _centaur_ \- but Pidge, I mean, come on. Would I really play anything else?”

Pidge snorts. “You were a holy _buzzkill_ , you mean.”

He folds his arms and tilts one brow curiously. “Dare I ask what _you_ played?”

“The only way my brother could convince me to join _and_ get the healer his party needed was to let me play a chaotic evil cleric the otherwise-good party was extorting for healing spells.” She sighs wistfully. “It was _great_. His friends hated me so much but they _needed_ me. Everyone nearly died, like, every game. I was a drow, all blood magic and cruel exchanges and mind games-”

She trails off and her lips quirk softly, a thought he can’t read etching into her forehead in slow motion.

Her eyes grow wide and the blood drains from her face.

“Pidge?”

“I have to go,” she whispers, standing slowly, waving like tall grass under a summer breeze. “I forgot, I had a thing I was going to do this afternoon… I’m sorry Hunk, I have to go.”

Something in the Yellow Paladin’s gut tells him not to stop her even as his fingers twitch and it takes everything he has not to grab her arm and ask if she’s alright.

 

Hunk finishes organizing his things and setting up a space for the treeca to nap in that _isn’t_ his bed (easier said than done for a finicky hundred-pound feline that likes to sprawl out and has no sense of boundaries), making sure to leave the door unlocked behind him in case they want to roam around the Castle later. He threads his fingers together and stretches his arms over his head, rolling his shoulders out and cracking his neck.

“Oh, hey Keith.”

The Red Paladin grunts in response, finger-combing his hair up into a ponytail and pulling a black tie from his mouth, twisting and tying it away from his face in a few casual motions. He shifts his weight from side to side on bare feet, bouncing in place as if getting ready for a jog.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Has Pidge been… off, lately?”

That stops the bouncing. “Off?”

“Yeah,” the Yellow Paladin sighs. “Has she been acting weird?”

Keith shrugs lightly. “No weirder than normal. Why?”

“We were talking about D&D, apparently she and her brother used to play a lot, and then she mentioned her evil healer character and got all weird…”

At the mention of an ‘evil healer’ his brows quirk together and he tilts his head. “What was it she said exactly?”

“She said something about blood magic and mind games, I think,” Hunk shrugs, gnawing gently on his lower lip.

The same sickly look Pidge had etches into the Red Paladin’s features and an almost imperceptible shudder runs through him. He looks off toward the wall, moving to walk past him. “Don’t tell her I told you, but she’s probably on the training deck then.”

“Why wouldn’t I tell her you told me?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Keith calls, waving one hand lightly as he picks up into a light jog down the hall. “It’s nothing.”

It’s _something_. His friends are hiding something from him.

And Hunk desperately wants to know _what_.

 

Keith turns a corner only to run smack into what might as well be a brick wall and lands flat on his ass a moment later.

“Oh, there you are. I was just about to go looking for you,” Allura laughs, helping the Red Paladin to his feet.

“Everybody’s looking for me today,” he huffs. “What’s up?”

“I just saw Pidge on the training deck, though I don’t think she saw me,” the Princess sighs, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I overheard her mumbling something.”

“And…?”

Her shoulders sag and she shakes her head softly. “I just wanted to tell you that if you want to talk about anything, I’m, as Hunk says, ‘all ears’.” She wiggles her ears, laughing as Keith rolls his eyes and does the same thing in response. “I’m always here if you want to talk to anyone. I promise anything you say in confidence I will never tell anyone.”

Keith sighs, staring resolutely at the place where the wall and floor meet. “I appreciate that Allura.”

“I do mean that you know. I know it might not be easy to talk to Shiro about it, but maybe I wouldn’t be so bad?”

“I appreciate this, but I was just about to go for a jog, so if I could…” he gestures vaguely with his hands.

“Right, of course,” Allura nods, stepping aside. “Have a good run.”

 

“She was wrong,” Pidge snarls, scrolling through the command settings with one shaking finger. Her nail clicks against the projected glass every few seconds. “She was wrong, she was wrong, she was wrong, she was fucking wrong.”

_You’re curious, aren’t you? You want to know just how different he is from you. You’re only half the same…_

The training room is nearly pitch-black and her eyes struggle to see in the low light. The familiar violet shade at the edge of the walls churns in her stomach and she goes to alter it manually, going for a warmer shade of red a little way off that doesn’t quite put her back there.

 _You’re not denying it_ …

“I don’t believe her, I won’t believe her.”

 _Why don’t you find out for yourself_ …

The Green Paladin marches to the center of the room, pulling her shaggy hair roughly out of her face and squaring her shoulders. She braces with bared teeth, exhaling through her nose as her bayard slides into form at her muted call, small and not the weapon that makes cool fear flush in her blood. Her eyes burn and she screws them shut with a low hiss.

 _You’re like me, human_ …

“She was wrong. It’s a _game_. Not real. That’s not who I am. That doesn’t mean anything.”

 _You’re curious. You need to know. It’s what you are_ …

The countdown sequence starts. Five ticks.

“She was wrong.”

Four ticks.

“He’s not like that.”

Three ticks.

“She was wrong.”

Two ticks.

“ _I’m_ not like that.”

One tick.

Her eyes snap open, pupils wide in the dark.

“… Right?”

 

The doors to the training deck slide open automatically and Hunk is surprised by how dark the room is. At first all he can see is a radioactive looking streak of green flashing and flying erratically in the darkness, but as his eyes adjust he’s able to make out more shapes, silhouettes and lines defining the clashing figures in the center of the room. The low lights at the edges of the walls are dim and for some reason shifted down into a low red rather than the normal Altean blue.

Pidge’s pale face is lit by the glow of her bayard as it arcs in vicious, rapid strikes around her, blocking a training droid that’s been disarmed and is now lunging at her with powerful limbs, likely trying to recover its staff on the ground behind the Paladin ducking and weaving underneath the merciless strikes. She slashes up at a forearm that brushes at her head and advances, pushing the machine further away from its weapon.

The training droid knocks Pidge back with a solid kick to the chest and she yelps as she goes down, damp hair clinging to her face as she scrambles onto her hands and knees for a bayard that slipped out of bare sweaty hands. It dives over her and catches the staff as it rolls across the floor, coming to a delicate three-point landing with its weapon braced behind and above it in one hand.

The droid rushes her as the Paladin recovers her own weapon and there’s a split-second as it arches its staff to swing at her face where Hunk is about to call off the simulation when Pidge lunges forward to meet it with what can only be described as a feral animal roar.

A long, crackling spear angles outward, pierced right through the neck of the towering robot. The bot dissipates as Pidge lets her bayard fall to the ground, following to land hard on her own knees as the simulation ends and the lights in the room slowly begin to brighten. She wipes one forearm across her forehead as her body slacks with relief, head lolling back to stare at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. The expression on her face is one of strangely bitter looking contemplation.

“When’d you get a spear?”

She jumps a little before turning to the Yellow Paladin, still panting through lips in a soft ‘O’ shape as she pushes a few strands of hair out of her face where they came loose, the ponytail (it’s too small to be a ponytail, more like a fluffy little bunny tail) holding her bangs and half her hair back on top of her head slowly coming undone.

“Don’t you know how to knock?” Pidge wheezes more than laughs as she picks up her bayard, rising to her feet slowly. She gestures with the inactive weapon around the room as the standard brightness is fully restored. “Seriously, man, at least knock before you enter a combat sim. I wouldn’t have seen you.”

“You don’t usually do combat sims,” Hunk nods at her bayard. She shrugs.

“I don’t usually do a lot of things. I’m trying to change it up.”

“Want to change it up with me?”

“Since when do you do combat sims?”

“I’m trying to change it up,” Hunk nods. Pidge chews on her lower lip for a moment before nodding. “What was it you were doing just now anyway?”

“Practicing for low-light combat situations,” she shrugs, voice eerily flat.

“If you mean a Galra battleship, why not use violet lights?”

Her eyes widen and her nostrils flare for the briefest of moments before she shrugs again and her face softens. “Red was lower. Dimmer. I just want to be as prepared as I can.”

 

The Green Paladin pads carefully through darkened hallways, armfuls of pillows and blankets at the ready for the sleepover on the Bridge, Hunk’s treeca following her.

Something clatters to the ground and Pidge freezes in the dark.

The space cat that had been trotting along beside her presses its head to her elbow, wide eyes curious as to why she’s stopped walking. The Green Paladin pushes it back and presses her ear to the wall, letting her eyes sink to the floor to watch the shadows that pass over the thin sliver of light underneath the door.

Coran’s voice is low, positively seething. “I knew he had fallen from grace, I knew so much, but this… I didn’t realize just how far Zarkon has gone if he’s willing to go this low. _Children_ …”

Allura sounds sick herself. “What was the name of the contingent responsible for the original capture again?”

“The operating name was Garonnin, under a Commander… Karakal, I believe. That was the first one, the second was under Commander Hanaro, who appears to have inherited the operation for a time. Why?” Shiro sounds tired, bitter, like the information is calling old memories to light he would rather have left forgotten.

“Garonnin, garonnin, garonnin, that word is old, even by _our_ standards. Even when I was young, that was a _very_ old word. I want to say it was something from one of Nova’s historical texts.” Long nails drum rapidly on a hard glassy surface. “Coran, do you remember what that word means?”

The elder Altean sighs softly. “I want to say it has something to do with parasites and livestock.”

“Good enough. That makes sense then.”

Footsteps, crossing a space, further away, and Shiro’s voice is low. “What are we going to do about this?”

“Whatever we can. The liberation of any captured Rhodarians we find is already something we must do whenever possible, but now… While this ‘garonnin’ plan hasn’t been working here on Rhoda there’s no telling if it is working or not among their allies on worlds less attuned to the finer points of Rhodarian culture. For all we know… We need to put a stop to it regardless. We need to save everyone we can.”

“… And if there are some who don’t want to be saved?” Coran murmurs.

Allura’s voice is bitter but resolute. “We’ll figure it out…”

Pidge catches a flash of movement at the end of the hall and pushes off the wall, padding as quietly as she can away from the voices filling her with a terrifying amount of questions.

 

The treeca sprawls out in Hunk’s lap, rumbling and demanding attention from their favorite Paladin, which Hunk is all too happy to give now that the feline creature has settled down and stopped harassing all the new faces in the Castle.

A soft chirping catches Pidge’s attention and she sees one of Allura’s mice sniffing cautiously at her. She extends a hand, letting the little blue-eyed mouse climb to perch on her head, whiskers tickling at her forehead.

“I won’t let Hunk’s cat eat you,” she laughs quietly, careful not to shake her head. “Promise.”

“The really cool thing is that Rhoda is actually locked with this other gas giant they named after their ancient death god Nefyn, so they’re always perfectly on opposite sides of their sun and never actually able to see each other. I say ‘each other’ but the moons of it are totally uninhabitable masses of ice so there’s not actually an ‘other’ to see. The biggest one is Sigyn here-”

While Hunk is pointing out the different planets and moons in the Rhodarian solar system Pidge pulls out a small tablet she’s set aside exclusively for Galra-English translations, one she’s loaded with everything Galra she’s been able to scrounge up in the library including three different dictionaries and a dusty thesaurus. She types in what she thinks is the way to write ‘garonnin’ in Standard Galra, hoping for an answer. She’d rather use her laptop, she might have better answers hidden somewhere in her data from Serva Nine (she remembers a Karakal, dead now, but mentioned many times) but for now she’ll ask her tablet for answers. She promised she’d leave the computer in her room tonight.

The screen lights up a moment later. She checks to make sure neither Paladin with her has noticed before looking down.

_Garonnin: a now-extinct species of parasite found in the brainstems of livestock that caused delirium, extreme docility, and high fever; would spread through herds rapidly if left unchecked and could lead to violently self-destructive behavior in afflicted animals._

And for that answer she now has half a dozen questions and sour bile sitting in the back of her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If we’re talking alignments for the characters themselves because I am a nerd who overthinks everything:
> 
> Pidge- chaotic neutral  
> Keith- chaotic good  
> Shiro- neutral good, closer to lawful good though  
> Hunk- lawful good  
> Lance- chaotic good  
> Allura- chaotic good, will fuck you up in the name of justice  
> Coran- true neutral, errs on the side of good and lawful but functions as a wildcard
> 
> Hunk may be a big fan of Han Solo (per his VA) but I feel like he’s the kind of guy who when put into a fantasy setting with the ability to be as moral or immoral as you want, he defaults to Lawful Good because being mean makes him feel bad. Pidge on the other hand I feel tends to be a bit selfish compared to everyone and prioritizes that over being lawful or good.
> 
> In fact, this moral alignment difference between Hunk and Pidge is going to be a source of conflict for them in part 3 and probably going to be a big contributor to the lack of Pidge/Hunk in this fic. I love it, I think it’s cute, but the way this story is going I wouldn’t put my money on them working out together romantically. I’m feeling the crush as one-sided, and she’s only just now started suspecting that she’s caught feelings anyway so it’s not like it’s going to be addressed any time soon.
> 
> Plus, I’m also a fan of things like Hunk/Shay and Hunk/Lance/Keith so I mean, it’s not like I’m super invested in the first place. And I got hit by some awesome Hunk/Lance stuff recently that made me seriously consider breaking two hearts for the price of one- I'm not going to, but I thought about it. Like, I’m an indecisive multi-shipper, I cannot be trusted.
> 
> If there is any kind of relationship for Pidge, it will likely be in part 4 after a timeskip, and then it’s a toss up between Hunk and this alien lesbian that flirts with Pidge later that I hope people will enjoy as a character as much as I do. There’s some big shit coming up in part 3.
> 
> This fic is going to be the death of me holy fuck I never used to be a longfic kind of writer what happened to me.


	30. Avalanche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't take much to kick off an avalanche, and once one starts it's going to go to its ultimate conclusion, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure about the chapter title but I think it sort of fits.
> 
> Major benefit to writing out of order: like 95% of this chapter has been done for a while so that was a relief when I opened it, especially since I wasn't that satisfied with the last one. I just needed some filling here and there and a few rereads and this was ready to go. Some of it was kinda painful to write, especially this opening scene because we finally got Keith to this place where he can make jokes about being part Galra and he’s getting comfortable in his skin and he’s about to not be all over again.
> 
> Oh, and you remember what I said about me getting a digital art tablet? Looks like that whole thing fell apart and I can't really push considering the circumstances so I might just have to cave and start taking pictures of my sketchbooks because I'm starting to get twitchy sitting on all this art.
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading and I hope you continue to read and enjoy the story as it goes on. And if there's anything you need tagged or think I should add to the tags please let me know.

It was an adamant insistence towards normalcy that brought them to this moment in time.

Allura had deemed today ‘hand-to-hand combat practice day’, deciding that they had just enough Paladins to work with for what she had in mind.

First up had been Shiro and Pidge. It hadn’t been much of a contest, although Pidge had managed to hold her own for a few minutes, longer than even she had expected; she maintained it mostly by ducking, weaving, and dancing out of the way, only ever moving on the offence when she saw Shiro leaving his legs in a position where she could (theoretically) take them out from underneath him. Her recent training with Keith and Allura had made this her standard mode of operation when she wasn’t using her bayard.

And really, just given _her_ size versus _his_ , with no terrain to utilize, it was the only possible plan of action she could have had.

He had still thoroughly handed the Green Paladin her own ass though, apologizing with a smile and a clap on the shoulder as he helped her up from where she was sprawled breathless on the floor.

Keith and Hunk were pitted against each other next, and it had been an incredibly close match. For all of Keith’s skill and dexterity he was going up against someone with enough brawn and endurance to hold his own for pretty much exactly as long as he wanted. His agility kept him from taking too many hits from the Yellow Paladin, but at the same time given how strong Hunk was it wasn’t going to take a lot to take him out, so he had to be careful.

Keith had slipped up, thinking Hunk’s legs were open for attack and had switched to offense and gone to sweep his feet out from under him, taking his center of balance with them- unfortunately for the Red Paladin, Hunk’s stance was rock solid and he found himself knocked back by the heel of his palm and on the floor in the next moment. Hunk had apologized profusely as he helped the bemused if moderately dazed teenager back to his feet, swearing up and down he had not mean to hit him _that hard_.

And of course when Keith had started laughing ( _that hard, what do you mean ‘that hard’_ ) Hunk thought he’d given the poor guy a concussion and apologized _even more_.

Now it’s Shiro versus Hunk, while Pidge and Keith get the luxury of facing off with each other afterwards to determine which of them is, in the Green Paladin’s own chuckled words, ‘ _slightly less of a loser_ ’. Because after the little battle royale comes Allura’s new training regimen, demonstrations, then more fights, then more training…

Their bruises are going to have bruises by the end of the day.

Shiro and Hunk start off, the Black Paladin already moving on the offence while the Yellow Paladin squares and holds his ground this round. Allura stands off to the side with critical eyes, making notes of everything the Paladins need to work on, and she paces in a loose crescent to keep her sights on the fight as they move.

Pidge clutches her helmet and immediately starts to bounce in place with restless energy- she’s got a secret little ace up her sleeve she is just _dying_ to use, but she didn’t want to break it out too early. She wants it to be a surprise. It’s going to be a game-changer for her in the field and she knows it.

It might have even won her the fight against Shiro.

Theoretically, of course. She’s not _that_ cocky.

… Honestly, that’s really only because it’s still a prototype in early, early testing. Otherwise she is _exactly_ that cocky. And who could blame her?

But no, she wants to save this one for Hunk. He’d appreciate it on a technical level.

Keith elbows her in the side with a ‘shush’ and she can see his ears pin back in annoyance as he scolds her, eyes still on the fight as Hunk moves to block a strike. This only makes her bounce _more_ , now out of stubborn defiance. He elbows her again, and this time Pidge uses her own pointy little elbow to jam him back right under the ribs and grin as he only rolls his eyes at the response… right before he throws his own helmet aside, grabs her in a headlock and drags her up under his arm to aggressively ruffle her helmet-mussed hair with his free hand. In his armor his claws are covered and blunt, and he knows it. He’s not afraid to get rough with her when they’re armored up. Pidge has never been too good at grappling, but she’s not exactly afraid to give it a shot.

It devolves almost immediately into a full-on tussle, and even though Pidge manages to hook her foot around and behind his knee, aiming to throw him on his back with her elbow in his gut, he uses his sudden loss of balance against her and shifts his weight to throw _her_ down, landing on top of her with a startlingly loud snarl as she yelps in surprise. He bares his teeth as he lands straddled over her with one forearm braced over her breastplate, holding her down almost entirely with his weight as his free arm hovers casually where his bayard is stored.

The sound he makes brings to her mind the noises young animals make when they play fight with their siblings or friends- it may be a snarl that rings through her ears and down in her bones but she knows instinctively that _it’s not a threat_. There are no teeth behind that warning.

Well, there are teeth, _yes_ , she can see them; pointy ones right in front of her face, flashing in the light, but she knows it’s an _empty threat_.

There isn’t an ounce of fear in her body, and she knows that he can feel it, and she can feel from him nothing but amusement. She can even feel the ‘why’- _she didn’t think this through at all, starting a fight she couldn’t finish_. There’s no real animosity or aggression. Neither one of them is bothered by this turn of events and Pidge is already twisting beneath him so she can go to knee him in the kidney and free herself while he’s dazed.

But that doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that she’s not afraid of him.

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t mean her any harm.

It doesn’t matter because the Green Paladin is not the only one who hears the sudden warning snarl ringing in the air or sees the mouthful of sharp teeth bared only mere inches from her face as she’s pinned flat against the floor of the training room.

There’s a _terrified_ shout that rips through the air and the tussling pair are flooded with cold dread and they tear away from each other in a heartbeat.

From across the room Shiro looks almost ghostly pale, and even though Hunk is angled between her and the Black Paladin she doesn’t need to see his right hand to know it’s activated. _She can hear the familiar low mechanical hum all the way from here_. She’s sure from his position Keith can _see_ the soft violet tell-tale glow…

She doesn’t need to be in contact with Keith to know the pain he’s feeling, the _shame_ and the _horror_ … She feels it herself, that agony at realizing how it must have looked, what it must have done to Shiro’s head to suddenly see…

Her stomach churns with nausea as she locks eyes with the Black Paladin, guilt boiling painfully under her skin as she sees his shoulders slack and Hunk calls the match off with a voice struggling not to jump a tense octave.

The Red Paladin looks painfully small in his armor when he rises to his feet, posture curled inward, watching carefully as crystal-clear embarrassment etches itself into Shiro’s face.

Pidge angles herself in front of Keith as subtly as she can when she takes a few quick half-steps toward Shiro, moving at the same time as Hunk takes one cautious step over to their distressed leader.

“Are you ok, Shiro?”

The Black Paladin glances between the two closer Paladins, pursing his lips and furrowing his brows in frustration when he can’t make eye contact. He gives them a quiet nod. His breathing is still shallow but it is finally starting to steady, to slow down into something a little calmer. He presses his left hand over his mouth and exhales through his nose.

Allura settles one hand on Shiro’s bicep and says something with only her eyes that makes the Paladin huff quietly.

And salvation arrives to distract them all, stumbling through the doors as if sent as an emissary of the gods.

“I have located the Blue Lion, I found Lance,” Coran intervenes suddenly, his voice a half-octave sharper than normal as it slices through the atmosphere of tension. The Paladins all turn to him with looks of regret and relief painted over their faces. Shiro purposefully unwinds the tension from his shoulders as the others take the moment to share their quiet concern with each other.

“Where is he, Coran?” Shiro nods and takes a step toward him.

“Here. In the Rhodarian system.” He purses his lips warily, locking gazes with the young limbs of Voltron. The confusion flitting over their faces is mirrored on his own. “On the other side of the Rhodarian sun, on an ice moon called Sigyn.”

 

Pidge bites her lip, prodding gently at the Lion pacing frantically in her head. She could swear she feels Green walking a deep groove down into her skull and the pressure is just a step down from painful.

**_I did not sense her, how could I not sense her…_ **

“Maybe the ice…? Maybe the base…?” she whispers, listening to the others murmur back to their own Lions in the same way. If Hunk’s whispers and expressions are anything to go by Yellow is downright furious with herself.

**_We are right here, so close I can nearly touch her, how could I not hear her…_ **

“Maybe she’s too injured, maybe she couldn’t reach out…?”

Allura turns from the map, rubbing at her mouth with one hand.

“I don’t know if they told you, Hunk,” Allura sighs, leveling her gaze with the careful veil of leadership. “But the Galra have been _using_ captured Rhodarians. If they have Lance as prisoner there… I believe the Galra must be using Sigyn as a forward base in their operations- Rhoda and their allies have remained free since the beginning of this war, they will not fall easily.”

Coran nods. “Spies have been popping up over the last few years. Young, affable Rhodarians, with money and technical skills and fairly modern dress, but no understanding of modern Rhodarian customs and culture. Or even any deep understanding of any of it. They can’t name common dishes from the regions they claim to be from, they don’t know the names of the lower gods of their pantheon, they even get things like marriage rites and funerary rites backwards even though the two are nothing alike.”

“How?” Hunk asks, brows quirking together.

Allura exchanges looks with Coran and Shiro, and the Black Paladin exhales softly before speaking.

“The Galra captured a group mostly of Rhodarians on a transport vessel to one of their nearer allies,” Shiro nods. “It was like a cross between a cruise ship and a cargo ship. That was nearly forty years ago. There was a second capture a decade ago, of two hundred more people in similar circumstances.”

“But the spies are not the ones who were captured. They’re too young…” Allura bites her cheek and folds her arms across her chest, tapping one finger against her bicep slowly as she lets the words sink in. The sentence hangs in the air like heavy smoke, clinging to every surface. “There was a recent attack that just happened to coincide roughly with our escape from Zarkon’s High Command, when the wormhole was corrupted. And after that, the number of spies they were picking up more than tripled overnight.”

“I was still recovering when they told me about the attack. Yellow wasn’t flight ready yet, she was in awful shape,” Hunk nods. “They never told me about any spies after that though.”

Shiro exhales through his nose. “They’ve yet to capture a spy alive, unfortunately.”

“So this,” Allura gestures to the projection of the Rhodarian solar system, pointing directly to the moon in question with a too-steady hand, “is too much of a coincidence. If he under the ice and unable to contact us there is a very good chance he has been captured; and if this coincides with the spike in spies we must assume there are other prisoners there too.”

“What do we know about Lance’s condition?” Shiro asks.

“Not much. I can’t get anything from either one of them. From what I can tell the Blue Lion’s diverting all of her power into life-support systems, her particle barrier, and her homing beacon. She’s in some sort of stasis- or, rather, she’s keeping _Lance_ in some form of stasis.”

“Well that makes sense,” Hunk nods quietly, drawing a concerned look from the others. Pidge is already nodding along with him, already riding on the same wavelength.

“She’d have to after a day or two, since the Lions don’t carry provisions. A human body can only go so long without water.”

_No provisions yet_ , she knows is the finishing thought in Hunk’s mind. She can’t hear it the way she can hear Green in her mind, the way she’d have heard him if they’d bumped shoulders, but she knows that it was there. They always rode on the same wavelengths, came to the same conclusions at the same time, and she knows they’ve already clicked back into synchronization. It’s why they’ve always worked so well together.

“How long?” The Princess tilts her head curiously, distracted by the alien-ness of her Paladins.

“Three days at a minimum, seven at most.”

Allura gapes. “How do you people _survive_?”

“How long can Alteans go?”

“Thirty days on average, but this- _back on track_ ; we’re going to need you all in the Green Lion for this,” Allura announces, no room for discussion. “You’ll need to fly in undetected and she’s the only one who can disappear in plain sight. You don’t want to attract any attention on Sigyn- we don’t know what’s waiting for us there.”

Pidge and Hunk share a look. Pidge purses her lips and volunteers; “We can modify another Lion with a second cloak if we start right now- I’ve got a few half-finished mockups of the mod, Hunk and I could complete one of them and then install it, it would take maybe forty minutes total. That way we can have two go in together.”

The reaction is immediate and the room erupts into sound.

Pidge and Hunk decide together while everyone else debates out loud the merits of the possible options. Red is freshly healed but not exactly the most open of Lions and Black is in absolutely no condition to even fly yet, while Yellow has been in top fighting shape for weeks.

And when the respective elements are factored in, fire and sky would not exactly be the top choices for a world made entirely of ice and earth. Resilient and adaptable forest is only going because she has to.

No, it has to be Yellow.

In the back of Hunk’s mind he can feel her dancing at the thought.

 

Hunk bites back a groan as he struggles to get the Red and Black Paladins to _understand_.

“What if you worked on separate Lions, with Shiro and I helping?”

“I ran the numbers already, dude, and it would take way too long. Neither one of you two is that experienced with the mechanical side of this thing, we don’t really have the time to show you-”

“The both of you would only slow us down,” Pidge cuts in with no room for argument. She says outright what Hunk was trying to imply. “Too many cooks in the kitchen or whatever.”

Shiro clears his throat to draw the attention of the teenagers. “We could always watch so we can help the next time around.” Keith nods vigorously.

It’s painfully clear that Shiro and Keith don’t want to be alone together. Pidge and Hunk are miserably aware of this fact, and are still trying their damndest to make it happen _anyway_. The big purple elephant in the room has to be addressed eventually. Preferably sooner rather than later.

“Not this time. Besides, you won’t be seeing anything when it comes time to hook up the cloak. There won’t be room for an audience.”

The look Hunk shoots her makes her realize she has some explaining to do, but he doesn’t say anything to the contrary. She knows he knows where the original device was installed, and she knows that he knows if they were doing it that way then there would be plenty of room for an audience.

She’s so grateful he doesn’t say anything.

“Oh, Shiro,” Hunk calls, waiting until the Black Paladin turns to face him. “Can you get Coran and load us up with medical supplies? If we’re going to be picking up passengers…”

Shiro nods, shoulders squared as he finds a distraction.

“Green will just leave her mouth open,” Pidge calls after him. “You can put them wherever, there’s plenty of space.”

She catches Keith’s wrist as he turns to leave too, transmitting a few quick thoughts.

“My computer passwords,” she nods as she releases him, “and a few words I need you to do a search for on my computer. On the data from…” she glances back at Hunk, pursing her lips and lowering her voice. “From Nine. It might be relevant. Just leave it open on my desk, I’ll look at it later.”

The Red Paladin blinks a few times before giving her a casual two-finger salute. “That, I can do.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” she calls, waiting until Keith turns around again. “Those prototypes we were working on? Take a couple fistfuls when you armor up. They’re not touchy anymore.”

He snorts. “I’m trusting you on that one. I’d hate to lose a hand to those things.”

She laughs. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

“I have a list. Chronological or alphabetical?”

“ _Go_.”

The left limbs of Voltron wait until the door closes behind him before setting off to work.

“Since when is anyone allowed to touch your computer? You nearly bit my head off once over it.”

“Desperate times, Hunk, desperate times.”

 

“So when we split up you’re taking Shiro, right?”

“Trust me,” Pidge grunts as she wiggles her way a little deeper into the Yellow Lion’s open chest cavity, looking around for the right panel to pry open, “I would be taking him even if he didn’t have that arm of his. Thankfully we have _that_ as an excuse.”

“Right. _Duh_.”

“And speaking of that arm, quick tangent, that prototype replacement we were going to use? I tested it. It corrupted some of the data I got with it and I don’t know what went wrong. After this can you take a look at it?”

“I can. Does it by chance have anything to do with this mysterious Nine you and Keith seem to know about?”

She sighs softly. Of course he’d want to know what the hell that meant. “That’s a long story Hunk, but yes. And back on the topic of Shiro, I hate to say it, but I don’t think he’d let me go with Keith right now.”

“You _are_ Space Dad’s favorite.” Hunk doesn’t need to see her face to know she’s sticking out her tongue.

(Nobody would ever call Shiro ‘Space Dad’ to his face, they know better, but it’s still become an inside joke for the limbs of Voltron after one long, sleepless night. At three am, everything is hilarious.)

He keeps a firm hold on her ankles as he rolls his tense shoulders, careful not to let her slip- not that she’d really fall, she’s jammed halfway inside a Lion with plenty of handholds, but he’d rather not drop her all the same.

“Am not.”

“Are too, Pidge. You could go and murder someone right now and Shiro would only help you hide the body.”

She grunts and shoves her hand down between her legs and wiggles her fingers. She can feel a slight shift in balance as a hand releases one of her ankles. “Dlaarian wrench.” The tool hits her palm before she can finish her request. She draws her arm back up and begins loosening a protective interior panel- she’s not excited about having to worm her way completely inside of a Lion to install the cloaking device. Even less so because it’s not _her_ Lion she’s going to have to be inside of; she’ll be going off of outside instructions rather than internal direction to put it in the right spot.

She could install it from the inside in a channel underneath the floor, but she’s already done the same thing she’s doing now with her own Lion while she was waiting for Keith to wake up, so she couldn’t say it wasn’t a good idea. Of her options it was definitely the better to put it somewhere she already knew was better protected and had way better juice. This way it won’t run out after a period and need to recharge.

“I honestly doubt I am his favorite.”

“Pidge I’m pretty sure you’re everyone’s favorite.”

She’s not sure whether the hot embarrassment suddenly flooding through her veins is hers or his and she’s not sure whose she even wants it to be. She doesn’t need him to say the rest of the words just itching on the edge of his tongue, she can hear them anyway. She can _feel_ what he was about to say.

‘ _You’re my favorite_.’

She presses the wrench into her forehead for several seconds as she wills the thought away, trying to refocus on her task. She gives herself a few gentle taps on the head with the tool in frustration.

‘ _You’re my favorite_.’

She is _not_ liking this intimate Paladin bond thing so far.

At least it’s only a physical contact thing.

Thank the fucking stars it’s only a _physical contact_ thing.

She doesn’t think she could manage if it was an all the time deal.

 

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I forgot I did this kind of… upside down last time.”

“ _What_?”

“I was upside down last time, Hunk.”

“Yeah, no, I got _that_ part,” he replies, voice clearly less than amused and more than a little concerned through the communicator in her ear, “I meant ‘why’. _Why were you upside down_?”

“I didn’t have you last time,” Pidge shrugs, more verbally than physically given the snugness of her current quarters. “Had to have Green lay back so I could get in on my own.”

Pidge immediately cringes; she can already hear the lecture coming so she cuts it off before it starts.

“Before you light into me you have to know it was the middle of the night and Keith was still in a pod and Allura and Coran were asleep- nobody was available.” _And none of them were my best friend_. “I did it alone and got it done before anyone noticed I wasn’t in bed.”

She doesn’t mention how she pulled her stitches, or that she had stitches at all. She doesn’t mention that she got caught bleeding shortly thereafter, and was sent into a pod to heal. She doesn’t mention how annoying it was to scrub her own dried blood out of the inside of her Lion the next day even though that was _honestly_ the part that stuck with her the most.

“You did that instead of _sleeping_?”

“Oh don’t you start, Hunk,” she snorts, glancing around for the right place to connect it. “I know you tinker when you should be sleeping too, this is _not_ just a ‘me’ problem.”

“Yes but I do actually sleep, you know. I’m _still_ not sure you don’t just occasionally recharge your batteries when nobody’s watching. Lance and I actually had a bet about it going back at the Garrison.” He pauses. “Actually I think half the class did at one point.”

She grins, propping her chin on one hand.

“And your wager was…?” She hears a deep, tired sigh in her earpiece.

“Human, at first. Eventually, like everyone else, I came around to Lance’s robot conspiracy theory.” He pauses and Pidge imagines he’s shaking his head. Part of her is _flattered_ she ended up becoming the center of a minor conspiracy theory. Most of her is concerned, though. Did no one really have anything better to worry about? “Seriously though, the longer we knew you the more we seriously wondered if you ever actually slept. You always looked like you ran entirely on _spite_ and _coffee_.”

“Well, you’re not _wrong_ …”

“Am I ever?”

Pidge snorts at his cheeky tone and gives up looking. “I’m not too sure where to hook it in, there’s a few options here and I don’t know how similar her layout is to Green. Where does she want it to go?”

“Hey Sunshine,” Hunk croons quietly, and Pidge can hear the gentle hum of his hand tapping against the thick metal panels of the Lion’s chest affectionately, “can you- ah, thanks big girl, you’re the best.”

The physical rumbling of a Lion that is not her own while she’s stuck in its chest cavity like a little parasite is _terrifying_. She breathes slowly and counts the seconds, trying not to let herself get caught up in the sensation of the air around her vibrating with an eerie charge. It’s nothing like the feeling of her own Lion- this is solid, heavy, coarse in her bones like dry sand, it doesn’t weave and curl through her the way it should.

“Well?”

“She says to hook it in to the crystal to your left.”

Pidge twists-

“No your other left.”

“Can you _please_ teach your Lion right from left?” she growls as she twists the other way, spotting a short blue-green crystal pulsing with energy. She reaches out gently to touch the support platform beneath it and immediately recoils with a hissing curse. She pops her tender finger in her mouth, warily watching for more sparks.

“Bad girl,” Hunk murmurs.

“You had _better_ be talking to Miss ‘Kitty Sunshine’ here or you and I are going to be having a _conversation_ when I get out there.”

She doesn’t need to see his face to know he’s blushing. She doesn’t need to be connected to him to know he’s blushing.

Faintly in the back of her mind she can feel the amusement of the Green Lion but she decides it’s probably in her best interest to just ignore that right now.

It’s also a very good thing nobody else is in the hangar with them. Normally Lance would be the one keeping them company, providing narration and background noise from somewhere nearby as he does his best to stay the hell out of their way. Where Keith and Shiro constantly try to make themselves useful whenever they come in Lance figured out early on he was most useful on the sidelines as moral support, conversation starter, and most importantly, snack fetcher.

Also he made an excellent rubber duck to bounce ideas and problems off of, and had on one or two occasions thought of a workaround they hadn’t come up with.

It’s why Pidge and Hunk normally let him stay while they were tinkering. It’s also why he had some excellent material to tease the two of them with.

It’s a very good thing nobody else is there.

 

“Xenofestran hammer.”

“Need your hand first, Pidge.”

Right. Duh.

It isn’t technically a hammer, not really, but it looks similar enough that it’s easier for the pair to call it that than its fourteen syllable proper name. It’s more along the lines of a fancy little alien welding tool than a hammer, designed for detail work and small items. On one side of the small head of the hammer is a perfectly flat surface a user is supposed to gently hit- each tap administered by a palm or finger releases from the opposite end a short hot burst of plasma. The other side of the head is slightly concave and releases the plasma when the tool is struck, thus distinguishing what Hunk and Pidge have coined as ‘the tapping end and the zapping end’ of the tool.

Coran had once said the tool was all but idiot-proof, but the two Paladins know better.

Pidge, unfortunately, has a terrible tendency to forget which end is the tapping end and which end is the zapping end.

“ _Cockfuckingmothersucking_ -”

“Seriously, Pidge?”

“I will _eventually_ get it right the first time,” she snaps, holding her tender hand close to her chest as she holds in a whimper of pain. She appreciates the fact that he doesn’t worry when she burns herself on a tool and instead just gives her his standard long-suffering sigh, the one usually reserved for when a certain _someone_ starts pulling his antics and shenanigans.

He doesn’t worry any more, rather. At first he would try to cart her off to the med bay every time she so much as got a little lick of electricity. It was almost sweet when it wasn’t frustrating.

But by now she’s burned and lacerated and electrocuted herself so many times during their tinkering that at this point it’s become standard for them to just secretly keep medical equipment in their toolboxes when they work. Hunk slips up far less than she does, the physical side of engineering and mechanics is his natural element in a way she envies, but he still has his days, and not all of them are good. They’ve learned a lot of things on the Castle of Lions, including which tools can (faster than you can even register, so smoothly you don’t even feel it) cut bone deep when you get careless. The others would probably worry themselves sick if they knew, but then again, what they don’t know…

“I’ll catch you.”

Pidge feels his hands let go of her ankles and pulls her legs up out of the way, hanging on to the inside of the Lion with her unburnt hand as she waits for the signal. They’ve gotten damn good at blind catches, even if falling still scares the hell out of her every time. It’s a good thing she trusts him.

“Ready?”

Pidge grunts softly in reply, left arm aching as her lower half dangles freely from inside the Lion. Her bicep begins to tremble in frustration, unused to the strain. She decides quietly that she should definitely start working out more.

“Drop.”

She lets go almost on instinct, the wires and metal whooshing past her head in a dizzying blur before she lands roughly in a solid pair of arms, taking a half-second to catch her breath before opening her eyes again. Hunk tilts one brow up at her and she shrugs uncomfortably. So she burnt herself on the Xenofestran hammer. So what. That’s nothing new.

She wiggles herself free and wanders across the floating platform to her toolbox, ignoring the look she knows he’s shooting at the back of her head. She cradles her right hand protectively close to her chest.

“I’m _fine_ , Hunk,” she sighs, digging through her box. “It’s not that bad, I didn’t even hit it that hard.”

“Let me see.”

She sasses him purely on instinct. “You’re not a doctor.”

“At the rate you keep injuring yourself I’d say I’m already halfway there,” he quips, the dry grin in his voice clear as a bell.

Pidge rounds on him with a pout, unable to find the tool she’s looking for. “Fine, Doctor Hunk.”

Both of them have the same shameless ‘hunky doctor’ thought and devolve into quiet snickers, trying their best to keep it together as Hunk takes her hand in his and looks over the nasty burns on her index and middle fingers. It looks almost like she stuck them in hot oil the way the flesh on the ends of her digits is blistered and burnt an ugly, bright shade of red. The dead skin of her blisters is silvery and frayed at the edges, oozing with fluid. He doesn’t touch the skin just around the burns, knowing from his own past experience that the hammer has a tendency to leave pain in the area surrounding the injury too, carefully flexing her unburnt digits and sighing.

“Just how hard did you hit that thing?”

Pidge looks away quietly. She knows he can feel her embarrassment, and she’s grateful that he doesn’t comment on it.

“I didn’t think I hit it _that_ hard.”

He pulls a large cuff-shaped tool out of his workbox on a floating tray nearby and shakes his head. “You don’t normally burn yourself this badly. I don’t think you’ve _ever_ done a number on your hand like this before, actually. This is pretty bad.”

Pidge straightens her fingers out as best she can and Hunk slides the tool up until it completely encircles her right hand from the wrist down. She knows she doesn’t normally hit it that hard, but she also knows she was distracted. She just couldn’t get _that_ thought out of her head (‘ _you’re my favorite_ ’) and in her confused frustration she gave her strike to the Xenofestran tool a little extra oomph. Maybe a little too much oomph.

“Ready?”

Pidge nods, looking away from the medical tool as casually as she can. Her breath hitches nervously.

Just like with needles, it’s a lot easier to tolerate if she doesn’t look.

Hunk presses a small white button on the top of the device and holds it in place as it chirps to life. Pidge grinds her teeth together as her skin hisses under the tool and begins healing over at an unnatural rate. It was a nifty little gadget, specifically designed for surface area injuries on hands and feet, and it was much more convenient than throwing someone into a full body healing pod when all they needed was a quick patch job. It’s something the pair of them have made good use out of for a while now.

Neither Paladin actually knows what it’s called though as they have simply not bothered to ask.

Pidge only even found it by chance, really.

She had cut herself on a different tool one night while tinkering with the Green Lion’s invisibility cloak, months ago, trying to find a way to extend the length of time it would function before cutting out and needing time to recharge. She’d wandered through the halls with her clenched hand tucked underneath her shirt, trying to keep blood from dripping everywhere until she could remember where the med bay was.

She spent a few minutes deliberating on whether or not she could (let alone should) let herself into a pod for a few minutes when she noticed the rows of drawers full of medical equipment lining the walls. She dug through them for a few minutes hoping for gauze or maybe alien superglue when she saw the display on the wall beside the drawers flashing with soft blue light. She knew just enough Altean by that point to see it was asking what she needed. Her input of ‘cut hand’ led to a drawer popping open and a short tutorial video popping up on the display screen.

Since there were a few identical tools in that drawer she decided to take one for her toolbox on the off chance she hurt herself again, but at an hour where other people would be up and wandering the halls.

Miss Independent, her mother had always teased. Hypocritical, but true.

“Aaand we’re done; how’s it feel, Pidge?”

Her hand is nearly as good as new in less than a minute, although her skin is a little tender and warm where the device just stitched her back together and if she _really_ stares she can see the hazy divide between the healed tissue and the unharmed. The tips of her nails are a bit thin and burnt though so she’ll have to trim them later. She flexes her fingers slowly before suddenly cracking all of her knuckles together in a quick sweep, grinning when Hunk looks just a little queasy. He always prefers to take it a little slow after healing.

“Like new. Thank you, doctor.”

 

“ _Everyone to the Bridge_!”

The Green and Yellow Paladins nearly jolt out of their skins as Allura’s call bounces across the metal of the Yellow Lion’s bay. They don’t bother cleaning the grease from their bodies and sprint across the Castle as fast as they can, stumbling into the room as the last people to enter but, given the breathlessness of the others, not by any large margin.

The Altean is pulling at the space around her flight position, fingers flying over projected screens flickering in and out of existence so quickly they can barely register any of the words printed in the air at all.

“Lance, Lance are you there? Are you alright?”

There’s a distant coughing before a familiar voice slips through the speakers. “ _I am now that I’m hearing your heavenly voice again, Princess_ …”

Everyone starts screaming all at once.

“Where are you?”

“Are you hurt?”

“What’s going on?”

“Do you know what happened to you?”

“Can you see anything?”

“Guys,” Lance coughs, his voice clearly exhausted but warm with an obvious smile. “Guys, one at a time please. In order of beauty if you can- so Allura you go first, Keith you’re at the end of the line.”

Keith folds his arms with a huff and Pidge snickers, patting his arm comfortingly. He grimaces as she smears a little grease on his bicep and she uses the back of her hand to smear more of it on him before Hunk smacks her shoulder, scolding with his eyes. She waits until he looks away to smear one last streak of grime on the Red Paladin. Keith rolls his eyes and shoves her away.

“Are you alright Lance? Your Lion’s signal disappeared…” Allura shifts her weight restlessly from side to side.

“Ah, that,” the Blue Paladin groans softly. “They brought something in, I guess like an EMP but way bigger, and when it blew up it knocked poor Blue out. She went down hard and I’m not sure how long it will be until she gets back up. I guess they got sick of waiting me out.”

“Waiting you out?”

“I was having a lovely ice-nap until they got impatient with me.”

“You were in stasis?”

“Pretty much. Though I think it’s more like hibernation, because I am _hungry_. Please tell me there’s a plate of food goo waiting for me on the Castle.”

Before anyone can answer to the affirmative there’s a sickening shrieking of metal that fills the air and everyone covers their ears, some people crashing to their knees as the sound rips through their skulls. Half the shrieking in the Paladins minds comes from the inside, from the terror and the horror of their own Lions- even when Blue is unresponsive they can sense her, and now they can _feel_ her. Allura pulls one hand from her own head, clutching at the controls to keep from stumbling as the not-screaming finally cuts out. Her complexion takes on a sickly undertone as she struggles to keep a level voice.

“What was that?”

The Blue Paladin swears unintelligibly and suddenly they can hear laser fire.

“ _Answer me Lance_!”

There’s more fire, a loud, pained shriek followed by a distant whimpering noise, and then heavy footfalls as rapid Galran in a coarse dialect echoes over the speakers. The Princess whips around with wild eyes but her voice is low and frigid.

“ _Lions, now_.”

 

Pidge can feel the thick dry snow underneath her paws and a violent icy wind blasts across her Lion’s face, sending a reluctant shiver down her own spine as she pries herself from the seat of her Lion. Shiro serves as a buffer between her and the wind, letting her cling to his right arm as she races to keep up with his loping jog.

They had to land far enough away that the disrupted snow wouldn’t be noticed from the base but still close enough that they could run back to Green without much difficulty. It had taken a while to pinpoint any above-surface entry points, in no small part because the two invisible Lions and their Paladins were terrified of getting too close on the off-chance…

They reach a door almost like a large shed, and Pidge whips out a thin strip of something metallic from one of her pockets, placing it carefully over the scanning pad.

“Your code, in your arm,” she nods at Shiro. “I can’t change it yet, but a strip of aluminum is enough to disrupt the code that it won’t read the ID, but not enough that it won’t still let you in. You’ll just register as ‘Galra’, no data. Hopefully that won’t set off any warnings.”

The Black Paladin blinks at her in fascination. “So that’s why you made me rip out that ID pad a few months back.”

“Had to test it. Still can’t believe this works, by the way. This is almost barbarically simple. I feel like I should be offended.”

A heavy hand affectionately smushes her helmet down on her head- a replacement gesture for a hair ruffle- and he just shakes his head, placing his prosthetic flat against the scanner with baited breath. It opens a moment later and the Paladins duck inside, grateful to be out of the storm of snow and ice.

“You just like a challenge,” a voice laughs in her ear, and she shrugs shamelessly.

“I do, Hunk, but so do you.”

 

They didn’t go for any kind of a more standard computer (that would be risky to the point of being suicidal in their situation) and opted instead for data storage- a cold room, easy to find, and so big and disorganized that nobody bothers being down here unless they absolutely have to be.

Pidge brings up the map of the base first, eyes flickering ravenously over the image.

Her stomach drops out and even though Shiro isn’t even touching her right now he reacts immediately to the change in mood.

“ _Shit shit shit shit shit guys this is a class Z battleship_.”

“What?”

“The information I had about the prototype Z’s was more outdated than I thought, this is an _actual_ class Z we are inside of right now. I didn’t think these things would even be flight-ready for another seven years.”

_Fuck_.

“But, no, this is a moon base, it’s not a battleship,” Hunk murmurs, the sound of his Lion rumbling shut distant behind him.

Pidge shakes her head, tapping her nail violently against the panel with every word. “No, that’s what Z’s are for, it’s their secondary function. They’re not just for blowing holes in moons and serving as overcompensation for generals dissatisfied by the size of their genitals. The information I had told me these things were being designed for desert-climate exomoons and uninhabitable worlds with lots and lots of sand; apparently some bright motherfucker had the idea to include snow in their camouflage repertoire. They crash down onto barren worlds in ‘hostile territory’ in the middle of pre-planned firefights so they blend in to the chaos and then hide in plain sight under the sand, or in this case, the snow, putting them in a strategic long-term spot for surveillance and assault. That means the base is much, much bigger than I thought, and that means if they spot one of the Lions in the air we are going to be in serious trouble because if they manage to get a lock on us they can blast us out of the upper parts of the thermosphere like it is _nothing_.”

She manages a shaky breath, finally out of air. If the Z’s are functional already, she’s going to hate seeing if the K’s are too.

“Which means Blue and Lance are going to be in serious trouble when it’s time to run because they will stand out brilliantly against this frosty hellscape.”

Shiro snarls out something that doesn’t translate and Pidge lets herself worry even more. She’s not sure what language it was, she knows he knows at least three plus that strange pidgin of Galra and Trade he sometimes slips into when he’s frustrated, but that doesn’t matter now.

It’s never good when Shiro swears.

She presses one hand to her temple. “We can figure this out, we can get out of here; fuck, if I had known I could have brought a mod to install in Blue, I’d have gone for Lance, if I had known-”

A firm hand squeezes her shoulder and a wave of steady, purposeful calm washes out, stitched through with rage and fear far more tempered than the stuff brewing in her own veins. The head of Voltron is level even in times of crisis.

“Self-flagellation later, Pidge. Right now let’s just focus on getting through this. Keith and Hunk still need you to open their door.”

She nods, sinking back into her work.

“Can you hurry up, Pidge?” Keith grumbles, teeth chattering violently. “I’m freezing my tail off out here.”

“ _Holy shit you have a tail now_?”

“No, no Pidge it’s an _expression_ ,” he hisses, and distantly she can hear Hunk’s muffled laughter. The way the Yellow Paladin chokes a moment later makes her think Keith threatened him with his eyes and she shakes her head.

“Damn…”

“… Are you hurrying?”

“Ok asshole, listen up,” Pidge barks, “I know I make this shit look easy but you are going to have to just wait a hot fucking minute, I am going as fast as I can here.”

Missions and combat are where Pidge is free to swear as much as she needs to in order to get the job done and she exploits the hell out of it. It’s everyone’s free pass, really, but Pidge is the one who uses it the most. It’s almost standard for half her chatter on the job to be swearing in varying degrees of intelligibility.

“Ok, alright I’ve got it, the doors on your end should open for seven seconds in three… two… _now_.”

She tilts her head, listening to the frantic crushing of snow underfoot as they sprint for the doors.

Heavy steel clunks into place a few seconds later.

“Please tell me you are both inside.”

“Seven seconds, Pidge?” Hunk furiously whisper-wheezes. “Seven? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how far we were from the doors? _We were hiding behind a snowdrift_.”

“You made it, didn’t you?” Keith coughs, sounding just as rough.

“Yell at Pidge later,” Shiro laughs. “Do you have a pin on anyone yet?”

“Patience,” she huffs, looking at the Black Paladin out of the corner of one eye. “Alright, alright I’ve got it, I’ve got a rough schedule of patrols, a pin on where Lance is, and Blue, and… and a floor, a whole floor for the Rhodarians. You’ll have to do a more thorough scan on your own, that’s all I have so far. Data should be in your helmets in five. I’ll let you know if anything comes up. Going to strip-mine the servers in the meantime.”

“Data received,” two voices chime, and the Green Paladin barks without thinking. She’s getting a little too comfortable with Shiro letting her run the show when it comes to moments like this.

“You guys have your coordinates _now go_.”

From the way Hunk snorts and then immediately covers it up with coughing Pidge imagines Keith mock-saluted her and she grins.

“Keith I’m going to punch you.”

“ _I didn’t do anything_.”

Oh he _definitely_ did something. That’s the defensive older brother voice.

“I’m gonna punch you _so hard_ when I see you.”

“Pidge, please focus,” Shiro sighs, the smile tugging at his mouth carefully removed from his voice. “Threaten Keith later.”

“ _SHIRO_.” Keith’s voice cracks a little and Hunk sounds like he’s in actual physical pain trying not to laugh right now.

Pidge rips off her helmet to shut out the others, focusing entirely on the Galra script flickering in front of her face. She feels herself slip into that zone of complete and total focus on the task at hand, where nothing and nobody can distract her, and she lets herself vanish into her work. Everyone else has their task under control, she doesn’t need to hear them. It’s not her job. She just needs to focus on her work and they’ll only distract her.

She’s sure Shiro is lecturing her about removing her helmet, non-Galra hand propped on his hip in that comfortingly scolding way, but honestly she’s too far gone to care. All that matters now is the data she’s stripping through and the answers that it hides as she frantically speed reads through the download, looking for any more information they might need to know _now_ , ‘Garonnin’ and ‘Karakal’ the words at the top of her personal list since she never got to check her laptop, along with anything and everything regarding Z’s.

She doesn’t hear anything until it’s too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 31 (A World Beneath) is not going to be what happens after ‘she doesn’t hear anything until it’s too late’. It’s going to be what Hunk, Keith, and Lance are all up to. Technically the ‘too late’ is after a rather large portion of time. That chapter is still in the early stages and will take some time to finish out, hopefully not too long.
> 
> Chapter 32 (Electrical Impulses and Chemical Reactions) is what happens after that line. And I would like to apologize in advance. That chapter is 100% complete and has been for quite a while.
> 
> Which reminds me, I need to update the tags to include things like 'graphic depictions of violence' very soon. I wasn't really sure how to do a warning about what I just implied with the Rhodarians, and that's going to be touched very faintly in the coming chapters but it won't be explicit by any means.
> 
> The ‘Lance is in stasis’ thing isn’t entirely accurate. I drew from this thing where humans would/still sometimes go into this sort of comatose death-sleep for days or weeks on end (the reason a lot of Victorian era lit was concerned with being buried alive and the reason for a number of add-ons for coffins from that time were like pulley-system flags and bells that could be rung from inside a coffin just in case) and figured ‘hey, their energies are so connected and Blue is so cold she could probably make this happen for a while’. It’s not like a cryo-pod by any stretch of the imagination, it's not a viable long-term solution, Blue was already at the edge of exhaustion so it wasn't going to last much longer anyway, it’s more like a state of hibernation.
> 
> When I was first drafting out this fic and deciding what happened to everyone post-wormhole I noticed that a lot of people seem to love whumping on Lance. Like, the poor kid’s first week on the Castle nearly killed him and he’s already damaged enough, let’s not beat him up any more (says the person beating the crap out of Pidge for well over 100k words) than we absolutely have to. So, ice nap. I really wanted to give him a break because everyone just puts him through the wringer. But break’s over now so he’s fair game again.
> 
> As for the Altean thing, they don’t have water that falls from the sky so they likely lack oceans and other large water bodies, and instead they have what must be intense windstorms to kick up falling hot rocks. The most likely explanation is that they are built for arid desert environments and most/all of Altea’s water was underground in aquifers and subterranean caves. I wrote a whole thing for it and I might post it over on tumblr because worldbuilding is something I do entirely on accident. Just, whoops, here’s a fuckin everything, nevermind all the shit I was supposed to do.
> 
> Also we should be wrapping up part 2 with Chapter 35 (Queens of Better Yesterdays), a look at Allura and her past, as well as a glance at Queen Eris, it's kind of a chapter in two pieces like Saltwater and Starlight was.
> 
> These last chapters for part 2 will be earning that violence tag so hard.


	31. A World Beneath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A world beneath not just the ice but the steel and the iron as well, a world hidden from outside view, a story recorded with blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today, chapters 31 and 32.
> 
> Real quick I couldn't fit this anywhere but I wanted you to see it anyway-
> 
> [“I mean at least wine me and dine me first. I don’t usually go for big and mean and ugly, but hey, I’m willing to see how the night goes before making any snap judgements. Who knows, it could be fun.”  
> “Charming.”  
> “Ooh, handcuffs. Kinky. Normally we save this kind of stuff for the six month anniversary but hey I’m not going to complain. My safe word is ‘apples’, by the way.”]
> 
> Because if anyone is going to be a pain in the ass while being held prisoner, it's gotta be Lance, if only to help himself stay sane. And lets be real, even if he is joking this is still the guy who got handcuffed to a tree by a pretty girl and instinctively went 'ooh now what'. Don't tell me he doesn't at least have a safeword picked out, even if he's never even held hands before.

Hunk takes one look at the expression on Keith’s face before volunteering; “I’ll start getting the Rhodarians out, you get Lance to Blue, and then we’ll meet up back here.”

“Solid plan,” the Red Paladin nods in obvious relief.

Hunk can’t really blame him. Sending the visibly half-Galra guy to rescue a bunch of prisoners on a Galra ship who have suffered horribly at the hands of the Galra Empire for _years_ , regardless of his Paladin status, doesn’t seem like the… well, the kindest or the wisest of ideas.

“Let’s keep the chatter to a minimum if we can,” Shiro’s voice murmurs low in their heads. “Especially you two, since you’re going to be out and dodging patrols. Only reach out if you absolutely have to.”

“Of course,” Hunk nods, giving the Red Paladin a supportive smile as he pulls up the map of the base on his gauntlet.

They look over where Pidge has marked Lance’s location and Keith bites the inside of his cheek.

“Maybe ten to get down there, another fifteen, maybe twenty to Blue if Lance isn’t in too bad a shape,” he traces out a rough trajectory through the projection with one finger, pausing where patrols will pass through, “I can be back here maybe ten after that if I really hurry.”

“Don’t push yourself if you don’t have to.” Hunk looks over his own map, drawing his own plan out. Scouring a whole floor is not going to be easy. “I’m not sure what to expect when I get down there, but I’ll check in with you every ten if I can to keep you in the loop.”

 

The Red Paladin makes it down to Lance’s holding cell in seven minutes, just tailing a pair of sentries that march past the room with no awareness of the Paladin hiding low in the shadows behind them. He waits until they turn the corner before extending one palm to the scanner beside the door, only half-surprised when the door obeys him.

That… could have saved them some trouble outside had they gone for any other entrance besides the large starship hangar.

Keith wills his helmet over his entire face as he ducks into the room, not quite ready to let Lance see him like… this. At least right now he has a choice in the matter.

A shadow on the floor jerks violently at the sound of the door opening and Keith’s eyes (they shouldn’t be this sensitive in the dark, he knows his vision shouldn’t be this clear, it’s not normal, not _human_ ) can easily make out Lance’s form. They took his helmet off but left him in the rest of his armor, at least, and given the odd angle of his shoulders and arms likely cuffed his wrists behind his back. A helmet in blue and white is settled on a sort of… work bench along the right wall, scattered with a number of instruments he’s not sure he wants to know the uses of.

The Blue Paladin sits up awkwardly on one elbow. “Back for round two already? Have you never heard of a refractory period? At least let the first round of bruises settle.”

Keith pauses. “Do I want to know?”

Lance throws his head back and laughs, bright and warm.

“ _Oh thank god it’s just you_. I mean I was really hoping my knight in shining armor was going to be Hunk, but at this point I don’t think I can complain.” Lance coughs and shakes his head, shifting to sit up and cross his legs underneath himself. “Suppose it could be worse. I’d never hear the end of it if Pidge was the one saving me.”

“Yeah she’s kind of an ass about that isn’t she,” Keith huffs as he kneels down behind the Blue Paladin, examining the heavy handcuffs encircling the Blue Paladin’s forearms. They’re tethered to the wall with something glowing that calls to mind that incident with Nyma and the tree all over again. “Though I suppose I can always lord this over you if you want, for all that obnoxious Pidge flavor without the high Pidge price.”

Lance snorts. “How about _no_. Also when did you get a sense of humor?”

“With enough money anyone can buy anything,” he rolls his eyes.

“… Since when do you have money?”

“A man can have secrets, Lance.” He summons out his bayard, keeping one hand on a cuff and testing with the blade of his sword at the connection. “Stand still.”

The Blue Paladin freezes as he’s told but keeps his mouth running. “I swear if you chop off one of my arms I will beat you to death with my dismembered limb before I bleed out.”

“… That’s a very dark thing to say.”

“Nah, you should see Hunk when he’s forty hours without sleep and cramming for exams. You want to see _dark_ …”

Keith shakes his head and slices through the tether first, watching it lose light as it thumps lightly to the floor before turning to the heavy cuffs on the Blue Paladin’s forearms. He slides the bayard into the joint where they connect and twists until something snaps and he bites his tongue at the sound- he knew it was coming but it still, it still startled him.

He grabs the Blue Paladin by one bicep and pulls him to his feet gently, cringing as he feels a heavy wave of pain wash through the contact; a throbbing in the face, a burning in the side, some aches in the ribs and legs.

“Shit, Lance, what’d they do to you?”

“When they interrupted me back in Blue they grazed my side,” he groans, a slight hunch to his posture protecting the wounded flesh. “Don’t think it even broke skin but it still hurts like a bitch. Burns like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Yeah I can feel it.”

“… You can _feel_ it?”

“Paladin bond stuff, I can explain later,” Keith hand-waves, grabbing the helmet from the work bench and looking it over for any obvious bugs, anything Pidge might slap him for not noticing. When he finds nothing he sets it on Lance’s head and touches his shoulder lightly. “When I touch you I can feel where you’re hurt.”

A lewd thought flickers through the connection and Keith chokes on his own tongue.

“I don’t know if we can feel that, and I’m not sure I want to find out.”

“Like you seriously haven’t thought of it.”

“It’s mostly just been me and Pidge until this week. The thought never really crossed my mind.”

“Baby sister, yeah, fair. Ew.”

“She knows we call her that, by the way.”

“And we’re still alive?”

“She’s biding her time.” He reaches out mentally, opening the line to the Yellow Paladin. “Hunk, you read me?”

The voice in his helmet is low, careful. “Yeah dude.”

“I’ve got Lance. Taking him to Blue now.”

“Copy that.”

Lance groans softly. “I am really not enjoying being the damsel in need of rescuing.”

“Tell you what, next time you rescue me.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Keith pulls Lance through the open door and goes to release his wrist when he picks up something very wrong fluttering in the connection.

“Is it supposed to be dark and spotty out here or…”

“Lance?”

Lance purses his lips for a moment, exhaling sharply through his teeth. “I can’t see.”

“ _You can’t_ -”

“I hit my head pretty hard when they shot me, everything between Blue and the room is a blur, I probably just have a concussion,” Lance tries to handwave away, voice warbling just a touch. His dark blue eyes are unfocused and Keith lets his helmet uncover part of his face as he stares, taking in the gash on his face and the nervous quiver of his chin. “I’m fine, really, I just need a guide dog.”

Keith’s not sure where his almost instinctive retort comes from, but he has a feeling that it’s Pidge’s fault somehow. She’s rubbed off on him.

“Woof.”

 

Hunk follows the voices.

The mechanical sentries don’t seem to pay the sounds of murmuring behind doors any heed, though it softens considerably when they march by all the same.

Rhodarian is almost musical to the ears, just a faint cadence underneath the words, and it takes a moment before Yellow flicks that mental switch, letting her Paladin speak and understand the common tongue of Rhoda as if it were his natal language. He can hear people murmuring condolences behind this door and he carefully pries open the side of the hand scanner, poking around at the wiring and watching the countdown on the side of his visor warning him when the next patrol will pass through. The door slides open and Hunk breathes a sigh of relief.

He is surprised by how many Rhodarians are here. There must be a fifty people, easily- he wasn’t expecting nearly this many, wasn’t expecting any kind of holding area to be so large. He knows he has room for them all and more in Yellow but it’s going to be an uncomfortable ride for all parties involved. Most of them are standing, unnaturally dulled silver skin catching the hallway light, and he sees a few curled against walls and cradled against the bodies of other prisoners, bandages (some improvised, some not) over large stretches of flesh. Mattresses and blankets are tucked in the corners, many stained with blood.

A few of them stop their murmuring dead as the door opens, frozen in place.

None of the bodies in the cell dare move, barely even breathing as their eyes adjust to the light.

He clears his throat. “My name is Hunk, I’m a Paladin of Voltron. I’m here to rescue you.”

Half of them start speaking all at once, not daring to go above a murmur but demanding his attention all the same.

“There are others, being moved, or held elsewhere,” one says, twisting long hands together nervously, “for testing, or…”

“We cannot leave anyone behind,” another butts in roughly. Two of their eyes are glassy and blinded where long, massive scars tear across their face. “Unless you plan for an act of _mercy_ , we must find the others.”

Something about the way the Rhodarian says ‘mercy’ forces sour sickness low into his throat.

“The other main cell is at the end of this hallway.”

“We can’t leave anyone.”

“There are _children_.”

One Rhodarian with tired eyes in a shade of green so pale it almost glows in the low light rises to the front. Their feline eyes flicker with pain as they bow at the waist, inclining their head toward the Yellow Paladin. “I will guide them out to whatever ship you must surely have waiting for us. I know the layout of this vessel well. Just tell me where to go.”

Hunk hesitates. “How do you know the layout?”

“You look young, Paladin,” they nod with a wry smile, eyes roaming his face gently. “Perhaps not much older than my own young ones back home, depending on how much time has passed. Not all of what transpired on this vessel you need to know of.”

“Sheera is trustworthy,” another nods as they clutch at gauzy white bandages covering their distended abdomen. The bandages are nearly soaked through with silver and others are already pulling at their own wrappings for the slowly bleeding Rhodarian. They give him a weak, watery smile. “We would all follow Sheera, to our freedom or to our death.”

The one two-fifths blind makes a guttural chirping noise that Hunk knows from experience is supposed to be a sound of agreement but sounds like a very distant kookaburra. “Either is better than another moment within these walls.”

The green-eyed Rhodarian, Sheera, looks back to the one with the gauzy bandages over their midsection. “You need not pray for the baby, Killie. They will be saved.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” they huff, careful of their wounds, “I will pray anyway. Not all of us have left the gods behind. _We are the children of Rhoda_.”

“The gods left _us_ ,” the blinded one sneers.

Killie retorts with a tired groan, glancing at the Yellow Paladin. “The gods brought Voltron to us.”

“After how much time, Killie? After how much time?”

“ _Enough_ ,” Sheera groans. “Please.”

Both Rhodarians purse their lips and nod like scolded children.

“Please, Paladin, bring the others here and tell me where to go, I can get everyone out safely. And Erva knows where they are holding the children. The Galra keep them on a separate floor away from us.”

“Before I ‘fell from grace’, incurring the wrath of a vicious man,” the blinded one, Erva, gestures loosely to their face, to the gashes across their eyes, “I was trusted to the care of infants. I ran the nursery.”

Hunk tries not to stare at the scars. “Can you take me there? And anyone who can help carry any children there?”

Erva nods, their three remaining eyes bright with renewed fire.

“I could guide you with none of my eyes. There is only Killie’s baby, and a few young children. We only need a few bodies with us.” They list off five names, gesturing to the other Rhodarians as they call to them. Each one steps forward eagerly, shaking out lean limbs bordering on thin and baring sharp teeth in excitement.

 

Erva pauses halfway to the next holding cell, long ears flickering back and forth with an emotion the Yellow Paladin can’t read.

“Get the door.”

Hunk doesn’t particularly care for the demand, but under the current circumstances he’s not going to complain just yet. When the door finally slides open he jumps back in surprise; he hadn’t expected to find a small armory. The scarred Rhodarian grabs one of the rifles from the rack and straightens their spine.

Erva handles the gun with awkward, eager hands, baring their teeth in a dangerous smile as they brace themselves the way they must have seen soldiers and droids do a thousand times over. They gesture to the trigger with one delicate finger. “I squeeze this to fire, yes?”

Hunk nods.

“Good.” They look to the others with roving, dark eyes. “Arm yourselves.”

 

The patrol timer blinks quietly on the edges of the Red Paladin’s vision and he mentally curses, dragging Lance down into a narrow side passage. They’re halfway to Blue, but they’re _only_ halfway to Blue. This is taking longer than he would hope.

Keith braces one hand against the flat of Lance’s stomach, bracketing the other roughly over the Blue Paladin’s mouth as he presses the length of his body against him and pushes them both into the shadows up against a wall. He holds his breath and strains his ears for the steady footsteps as he counts silently. The Red Paladin telegraphs through the bond as calmly as he can that he needs complete and utter silence if they want to make it out of here alive and he feels a flash of amused understanding in response.

One…

Two…

The sound is slowly getting closer, louder, and he’s not sure if the thundering in his ears is from his own heartbeat or Lance’s.

Three…

Four…

He can feel Lance’s abs stiffen under his hand as the feet come closer. Cool air brushes the back of his hand as they breathe as shallowly as possible through their noses. Hands bitterly cold even through insulated gloves settle on the bottoms of Keith’s ribs and flex with nervous tension as he watches the end of the hall.

Five…

A humanoid silhouette passes the hallway.

The Paladins go rigid.

Six…

It keeps walking.

Seven…

Eight…

The tension in Keith’s shoulders starts to unwind, but he keeps listening. He has to be _sure_.

Nine…

Ten…

When the footsteps fade into the distance he breathes a shaky sigh of relief and pries himself off his fellow Paladin. Lance laughs softly, sagging back against the wall. His voice is raspy and barely above a whisper as he turns downright cheeky, looking up (well, trying) through his lashes in a way far too flirty to ever be taken seriously.

“ _I mean I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong, but if you wanted to feel me up all you had to do was ask_ …”

“Do _not_ feel up my best friend while we’re on a mission, Keith,” Hunk chuckles through the comms and Lance pales noticeably. “At least wait until we’re off-world first.”

“Wait who’s doing _what_ now?” The Black Paladin’s voice is unusually high-pitched and in any other circumstance it would be hilarious, but here and now it’s just _embarrassing_.

“Lance is being a little shit, Shiro,” Keith murmurs, glaring at the Blue Paladin. Lance sticks out his tongue and folds his arms. “That’s all.”

“First of all, _play nice_ ,” the Black Paladin sighs, “second of all, no hanky-panky on a mission.”

Keith turns the same brilliant shade of red as his armor, choking on air. Lance is biting his lower lip so hard it might start bleeding as he swallows his own laughter.

Hunk snickers softly. “What, no input from Pidge?”

“She’s tuning us all out,” Shiro sighs. “Short of just physically picking her up and moving her there’s not much that can break her free now. She’s deep in the matrix.”

“Nerd,” the Red Paladin huffs and shakes his head.

“Says the kid who was a jedi for Halloween how many years in a row?”

“ _And you were Han Solo for how many years_?”

“That costume got me a lot of dates, ok? You don’t fix what isn’t broken.”

“ _How many dates_?” Lance cuts in. “Asking for a friend.”

Keith’s eyes risk getting stuck in the back of his head as he rolls them so hard he thinks he _actually_ gets a glimpse of his own brain.

“We’re only halfway to Blue, I’ll let you guys know when we’re down there,” Keith whispers, quietly elbowing Lance when he goes to demand an answer for his question. “Over and out.”

The Blue Paladin gives him a half-hearted pout as they start making their way through the halls. “Jerk.”

A strange thought flickers through Keith’s head- _you wish_. Red rumbles with almost mocking laughter and it takes everything he has not to mentally elbow her.

 

They make it to the nursery floor unseen when Hunk sees a long ear twitch and Erva raises their gun to shoulder height a moment before a soldier rounds the corner, firing off a single shot as he appears. The Galra crashes to the floor like someone just cut the strings on a puppet.

The Rhodarian waits, four nostrils flaring faintly, finally letting go with one hand and supporting the weapon entirely with the other arm as they pad over to the soldier. A smoking hole in the side of his helmet tells them all that they want to know and they make that same guttural chirping noise from earlier. Apparently it’s a noise of agreement _and_ satisfaction, if he’s reading the context right- he files that little bit of information away for later. They hesitate as they move to walk past before twisting and reeling one leg back, kicking the corpse in the side so violently Hunk flinches when he hears something snap on impact.

Whatever they say next Yellow refuses to let translate, but from context he can safely assume that it is not pretty. They wrap it up with a venomous hiss and an odd hand gesture that requires a strong flick of the wrist from the chin.

“Your foot or his rib?” one of the other Rhodarians chirps dryly.

Erva sneers teasingly, turning to walk with a clear limp they pay no mind to. “Both.”

“The next one is mine,” that same Rhodarian says, dusty pink eyes almost dangerous. “And if we find The Doctor, we save him for Killie.”

“Killie would never.”

“Then we will do it _for_ them. Take his legs out first so he can’t run.”

Hunk is beginning to regret going for the Rhodarians.

He understands their rage, their pain, but their bloodlust… it scares him a little…

The eyes and the claws and the _teeth_ aren’t really helping their case here. He knows they’re obligate herbivores, he knows what the teeth are for, but the most base part of his brain doesn’t care about any of that. What were once harmless alien features on some delightfully friendly people now read as the traits of something a little more dangerous, a little more hostile. It’s unfair, he knows, he shouldn’t be making these kinds of assumptions, thinking these dark kinds of thoughts about them, but even though he _knows_ it doesn’t help much.

 

Blue looks like hell.

She doesn’t look to be in nearly the state Red was in when Keith finally woke up, but she’s not exactly in what anyone would dare call fighting shape either. Her back end looks to be completely mangled, legs and what passes for her spine twisted up in ways they should never be bent. The most distressing part, though, that eats at Paladin and Lion alike is the jack holding Blue’s powerful jaw open- the source of that horrible metal shrieking earlier when Galra soldiers pried her open to capture her Paladin within. Lance looks through Keith’s eyes and the Red Paladin can feel the horror as he worries for his Lion.

Red reassures her own chosen distantly that Blue will heal from this, as she always does. She is water. Adaptable. Always changing. Always surviving.

“Think she’ll still be able to fly?”

Lance snorts, the hand he’s got on Keith’s forearm flexing lightly. “She could fly with one paw. She’ll make it back to the Castle just fine.”

“How do we get her out of here?”

A gentle mental nudge pushes Keith’s gaze up to the ceiling, keeping his head low against his shoulders as they make themselves as small as possible in the doorway to the catwalk that rings around the room. “Doors?”

He nods. “If I can get up to control center I can open the doors for you. Is she awake yet?”

Lance purses his lips and furrows his brows together as he reaches out in his head, poking around for the Blue Lion. He was the first to bond with his Lion, and yet the last to hear his Lion’s voice, considering the circumstances.

“Yeah, she’s exhausted but she’s up. She’ll protect me when I get close.”

“Wait, what about the weapons- this ship apparently has some pretty serious hardware.”

Lance shrugs. “Blue says it’s snowing out there.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Dude, Guardian Aspect of _Water_?” The Blue Paladin gestures to himself. “From what she’s saying, we’re going to be totally _cool_. This is literally her element. They won’t be able to see her. It will be fine.”

“Alright then,” Keith nods, shaking his head at the obvious answer. “Let’s get you downstairs and hidden.”

They move back toward a stairwell they’d passed before the Red Paladin stalls out.

“When I let you out this whole place is going to go on high alert. I don’t think they know we’re here yet. That means everyone else is going to have to book it.”

“Then see where everyone’s at.” Lance pauses, considering with unfocused eyes. “Do you want to hitch a ride with me? I’ll be able to tear a door in the hangar overlook like it’s nothing.”

“No, no Hunk needs me. I need to be back soon to help him get the other prisoners out safe. There’s a ton of people here.”

The Red Paladin prods carefully, quietly, reaching out to Hunk and Shiro.

“I’ve got a plan, but I need approval.”

Shiro snorts. “Since when do you ask permission for anything?”

“I’m _trying_ here.” He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I can get Lance to Blue and open the hangar doors to let Blue out, but when that happens everyone is going to know something’s up. They’re going to know we’re here.”

“How soon?”

“Five minutes, maybe. I’ll keep you posted. I can make it back to Hunk in maybe ten after that.”

“Sounds good to me, I’m just picking up the last of the people I need to find,” the Yellow Paladin responds. “You, Shiro?”

“Pidge and I can work with that, whenever she’s done here. Let us know when you’re letting him out.”

“Over and out.”

Keith hears them a full tick and a half before Lance does (damn useful ears, twitching in that thin space between his helmet and his head) and he’s already pulling them both to the floor with one arm, shoving his hand into one of his hip pouches as they begin to drop.

“ _Down_!” Keith grabs Lance’s head and pulls his face close to his chest as he throws several marble-sized somethings marked with streaks of neon pink and green at the droids, activating the black training veil on his own helmet to protect his eyes as the spheres chirp and swell to three times their size before exploding into a blinding flare of hot white light. The sentries crash to the floor a moment later, fizzing and sparking faintly.

Lance coughs, not moving from where he’s smushed down against the Red Paladin’s breastplate.

“… Ow.”

Keith releases him, not quite pulling away. “Sorry.”

“It’s cool.” Lance rubs at his face, careful of the open gash on the bridge of his nose that’s started to ooze a thin streak of dark blood again. “What blew up?”

Keith sighs softly, shaking his head as he pulls them both back to their feet. “I promised I’d call it Pidge-tech. That was the deal I had to make to get her to make them.”

Lance snickers softly, a playful sense of pity painted over his features as he stumbles to his feet. “Deal with the devil, dude; you sure that was the best idea?”

“Maybe. I can say this though- resident mad scientist likes encouragement. If you have something you want her to build, stroke her ego. So now we have these EMP flash bomb things. ‘ _Blind the organic, take down the mechanic_ ’.” The Red Paladin strides over to jab his bayard into the necks of each droid in turn as a precaution, taking care not to miss any. Better safe than sorry even if it would be a grave insult to the mad scientist in question. “So far so good. She delivers on her promises.”

Lance bounces slightly in place. “ _I have so many ideas_.”

“You will probably lose your eyebrows once or twice before she gets it right though.”

The Blue Paladin stills, considering. Keith sighs and grabs his wrist.

“Come on, let’s just get you to Blue. Think of all the toys you want from Santa Pidge later.”

He snickers softly as they descend the first flight of stairs. “I’m telling her you called her that.”

“She’ll never believe you.”

 

“Alright everyone,” Keith’s voice echoes in Hunk’s ears. “I’m in position to let Lance out. Is everyone ready?”

“Ready here,” Shiro’s voice responds.

“I need a minute, if you can,” Hunk murmurs, pulling away from the others, watching the Rhodarians in front of him with barely masked horror.

Erva and one of the others stumbled upon the Galra they were looking for, apparently, blasting him once in the leg and once in the arm. They found him checking up on the infant in the nursery and when he saw them, armed Rhodarians and a Paladin of Voltron, he ran to sound an alarm but he was taken down before he could trigger it. Two of them are standing over him now, their weapons braced but not aimed as Erva levels their rifle to the face of the person Hunk had heard them call The Doctor.

“Are you really going to kill him?”

Hunk doesn’t know where the words come from.

“Are you serious, Paladin?” the one with the pale pink eyes laughs, aiming at the doctor when he flinches. They spit a phrase in Galra Hunk fears is one they’ve heard many times before considering the way they say it. “ _Speak and I’ll blow your jaw off_. Of course we’re going to kill him. Why wouldn’t we?”

“He can’t hurt you now. You’ll be gone in ten minutes, you’ll never see him again.”

“Because of him we’ll never see half the people we love ever again,” Erva hisses, glaring out of the corners of their eyes at the Yellow Paladin. “Do you know what he and his subordinates have done to us? To the people we loved?”

“Erva please, this isn’t right, this isn’t justice _this is_ _revenge_ -”

“Killie is the only one to have ever survived his butchery! He killed my siblings! Neera’s youngling, barely an adult, died under his knife for a baby that never even drew breath! The blood loss, the shock and the pain killed them all, only Killie has ever lived, and even they might die _anyway_ , I can already smell the infection growing in their wound…” Erva breaks, still trained on the doctor even as their lips tremble and heavy tears streak across their face. None of the others even blink though saltwater starts to collect on their faces too. A soft hiccup catches in their throat as they refocus their aim. “He _must_ die. Do not stop me, Paladin. This is justice; _this_ is the justice of the universe that arose when Voltron abandoned us all to the Galra. _This is justice now_.”

A stab and a whimper of pain in the back of his mind, from Yellow.

 _The mistakes of her last Paladin. Mistakes he and this new generation must try to heal_.

One of the Rhodarians touches Hunk’s shoulder, the one cradling the bundle of fabric and squirming infant, Killie’s baby, blue eyes narrowed as their voice warbles. “I have no stomach for blood.”

They’re offering him an out.

If he isn’t here to stop them, he isn’t here to condone them either.

“Children are down the hall,” Erva nods, glaring through the tears. “Third door to the right. We’ll be there shortly. Take Jaen as lookout.”

The blue-eyed one pulls at him gently and he hesitates- this isn’t _right_.

“This is justice now,” another voice murmurs as they too pull him back. “Worry about the children.”

Hunk grimaces as he turns for the door, glancing back over his shoulder once before leaving.

This isn’t right.

But then… what would be?

He hails the other Paladins as they jog down the hall; “Ready on my end. Keith, I’ll be waiting where we came in, but in case you intercept us here’s the projected path I’m taking down there.”

“Roger that Hunk. Shiro?”

The Black Paladin grunts distantly. “Ready.”

“Pidge has been quiet for a while- you ok Pidge?”

“ _She’s fine_ ,” Shiro replies for her, just a little too tense to actually be alright. “We just had a bit of a scare earlier down by the servers, she’s just trying to hurry through this. We’re rigging up some charges now. Keith can you do some charges near the entrance you came in?”

The Red Paladin’s voice is cocky. “Can do you one better.”

“Overkill is fine.”

Shiro never approves of overkill. Something is definitely wrong. But Hunk has to shake it off and he focuses entirely on getting these kids out of here and getting everyone back to his Lion.

The one called Jaen unclips something from their blaster- _oh my god is that a Galra hand when they take the hand of a Galra soldier oh my god it’s still oozing blood holy shit_ …

They attach it back to their weapon after the door opens, pressing their back to the wall and nodding confidently at the Yellow Paladin as he tries not to throw up at the sight of a dismembered hand just… just hanging there, dripping slowly onto the floor.

“Little ones,” the blue eyed Rhodarian croons, rousing the sleeping children slowly. Four small bodies groan at the light and the noise softly. They brush gently at silky strands of hair strewn over dozing faces. “Little ones rise, it is time to go outside. We are going _home_. We are going to Rhoda.”

 

Keith nearly collides with Hunk in the hallway, punching his arm lightly and nodding as they take the last of the Rhodarians to the hangar doors that will take them back to the security of the Yellow Lion eagerly calling to her Paladin to please hurry.

“It’s going to be an ugly storm out there, everyone needs to stay together. I know your clothes aren’t going to be very warm but you won’t be exposed to the elements for long, I promise. We’re going to open the doors in just a minute, I need everyone to group together, find someone to hang on to.”

And then suddenly a shrill, feral animal shrieking, the scream of a fox in a trap, the howling of a mortally wounded animal tears through the air and compresses the grey matter in their skulls from all sides, twisting and crushing them on the inside. A violent pull low in their own chests tells them what’s happened long before their senses return- a Paladin is injured.

And from the sound of it…

“ _Pidge is down_.”

Hunk can’t find words but Keith certainly can. “What do you mean Pidge is down?”

“ _She’s- she’s- I’ve got her, I’ve got her. Pidge, Pidge look at me, come on little bird look at me. There, there we go, let me see those eyes. Atta girl Pidge. You’re going to be fine. I promise. Just hang on_.”

Hunk is leaning heavily against a support pillar with one hand, covering his mouth with the other so hard he’s probably going to have a bruise of his own handprint on his face later. His eyes are screwed tightly shut and he looks like he’s about to throw up. Or scream. Or cry. If Keith was a gambling man he’d put every dollar on Hunk doing all three.

The animal keening in their helmets is low, mindless, devoid of anything but the sound of raw agony as Shiro’s low panting and the hum of his Galra arm punctuates erratically.

There’s a heavy knot in the Red Paladin’s throat and he exhales as slowly as he can, reaching out for his fellow Paladin slowly.

He knows what Pidge can take. He knows what she can survive. He knows firsthand… And she’s with Shiro. Whatever happened, she’ll be alright. She has to be.

Keith has one hand on Hunk’s upper arm, squeezing him gently and radiating a sense of steady calm through the contact as deep brown eyes slowly rise to meet violet. He opens his mouth to say something- Hunk can feel the words before he says them, ‘she’s tough, she’ll be alright’- and then they hear her shriek so loud their ears ring, halfway to bleeding, Shiro’s wavering voice following through the comms.

“I need to carry you… You can’t walk, I need-”

A raspy whimper follows the Black Paladin’s voice, from a throat raw and dry. “Hurts. Don’t. Please don’t, Shiro. _Don’t make me, please don’t make me_.”

Hunk steels himself- “Hang on Pidge.” And then it’s like someone poured boiling water into the connection and the Yellow Paladin reels away from Keith, his bicep burning with whatever it was that just came out of Voltron’s right arm. Hunk clutches at his own arm half-expecting a hand-shaped burn in his armor as he looks up at his friend’s face.

Keith’s eyes are wide and empty and Hunk knows that look; he’s seen that look on Shiro’s face before, when he…

 _Why in the universe would Keith_ …

But he doesn’t get to ask questions. Before the Yellow Paladin can even begin to form words the inner hangar doors open to unveil a squad of armed sentries and the only priority becomes: _survive_.

Hunk’s bayard is already firing off and he’s calling to the Rhodarians to stay down and away from it all, taking as many as he can as fast as he can when the Red Paladin dives forward and forces him to focus his fire on the edges to avoid hitting his friend.

Keith doesn’t move like a person any more.

Fire flickers at the edges of his mouth with every exhale and the smell of blazing charcoal fills the air. The muscles of his body strain at the black material of his suit, only accentuating how feral he is as he devolves into a flurry of snarling and teeth and slashing with his bayard in movements too fluid for him to be actively thinking of what he’s doing. The transformation from sword to spear to maim a droid right through the eyeport and then back into a sword as he whirls with his shield braced for plasma fire is too fluid to be anything he could be acting out with thought. The reactions are involuntary. This is something else.

His skin has gone completely purple, and his eyes keep catching the light in such an animal way that they look entirely golden- _entirely Galra_. His lips are curled back from his teeth ( _sharp teeth when did he get sharp teeth are those new they must be new_ ) and he lunges with a roar that can’t possibly be human, diving headlong into a pack of sentries and tearing them apart like paper dolls.

It’s only when the machines are completely incapacitated that the Red Paladin stops moving, slumping heavily against a support pillar and panting as he holds his left hand close to his chest.

Hunk rests one hand on Keith’s back slowly, gently, almost afraid to disturb him, and a flash of a thought, a memory flits through the contact. His left hand (Keith’s hand, not his, though it’s hard to differentiate right now) throbs with pain more remembered than real.

“ _I’m not leaving you Pidge_!”

“ _Yes you fucking are_!”

“ _I am not leaving you here to die_!”

Over and over again like a skipping record laced through with deafening notes of fear and fury, slowly fading as the Red Paladin’s breathing levels out. Hunk can sense at the fringes so much more, a story he can’t see, something worse than he wants to know.

“ _You know you don’t have a choice. It’s me or it’s both of us. Get everyone away from here- don’t ever come back, don’t ever look back_.”

Pidge has never sounded so vicious, so cold…

“ _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._ _This is all my fault, I’m so sorry. Please just get away from me_ …”

Something he doesn’t understand tells him that’s only the beginning of the story, that there’s something far worse that comes later. He pulls away as he feels Keith come back into his senses.

 

Fear is not a bad thing.

Not really.

It keeps you grounded, keeps you aware.

Hunk doesn’t mind being afraid because he knows there are worse things than fear. Fear can be an obstacle to overcome. It can remind you to be cautious, to be sensible.

But right now… Right now he’s not so sure.

Every time Keith’s eyes flash in the low light the most base animal part of his brain screams at him to run, every time he sees those teeth exposed to the air his stomach coils into itself and he has to fight to keep a calm face. He can’t help it. He’s a primate staring into the face of something unnervingly feline and unnervingly _predatory_. It was fine before, none of this bothered him, he couldn’t have even imagined it ever would, but here and now on this dim little arctic Galra base in the ass-end of the universe his entire body is shrieking at him to _run run run get away from the predator and run you might be next run you idiot run_.

After seeing what is friend is capable of…

How in the universe Pidge has managed to embrace this so casually he has no idea and he would very much like to know.

Hunk understands now why Shiro screamed, why Shiro was so afraid in that moment. He hadn’t seen Pidge hit the deck, but he’d heard her yelp, heard Keith snarl. He had never seen their faces, but he’d seen Shiro’s. He’d turned just in time to see them separate. He understands now what kind of thought must have flickered through the Black Paladin’s mind when he saw Keith baring those _teeth_ in Pidge’s face.

He understands.

If the expression etching into the Red Paladin’s face is any indication, he knows what Hunk is thinking.

He understands too.

Keith cradles his left arm close to his chest and looks up with tired, mournful eyes through the strands of black hair hanging in between his visor and his face. Patches of the full purple wash over his skin start to fade slowly away.

“Please don’t look at me like that. Not you too…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took so long because I couldn’t get my brain to cooperate and finish it, it was like pulling teeth and it's not quite as dark as I wanted it to be, and my idea to help me write (watching a favorite movie) only led to me creating an incredibly in depth outline for a Pacific Rim AU because I have no self-control. Like I already have three other AU ideas floating around I'm never going to work on, I didn’t need another.
> 
> But now I have one, and I will probably work on it from time to time with the plan to post it all at once when it's done because damn is it fun.
> 
> Now on to 32, the chapter that has been 90% complete since chapter 1.


	32. Electrical Impulses and Chemical Reactions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mind, a brain (a life, a soul) is nothing more than a collection of electrical impulses and chemical reactions. Nothing more, nothing less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is short and messy and I would just like to state again for the record that this chapter has been my plan since day one. Most of this has been written out since the very beginning of this story. This was always going to happen.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> (Also, third time’s the charm Pidge. Third time’s the charm.)

Orange.

Orange.

Orange.

Why in the universe is Galra blood orange.

Orange in her hair, on her armor, splattered over her face. She sucks in a trembling breath through blood-sticky lips, the hot tang of alien lifeblood burning like a mouthful of black pepper, stinging and prickling against her tongue.

Orange.

What makes Galra blood orange.

Why.

Something is holding her, shaking her, and a gurgling echo of a voice off in the distance calls her name as the gentle tremors rack through her entire body. She forces herself to take in another sticky, peppery, burning breath. She needs to breathe. Breathing is a necessity.

She can taste the bitterness of _someone else’s blood_ in her mouth. Breathing is disgusting.

Breathing is a necessity.

In, two three.

Out, two three.

Like Matt used to on the bad days. Like she used to help him with when he couldn’t do it alone. Count in, count out.

Breathe Pidge.

In, two three.

Out, two three.

Breathe.

**_Breathe._ **

Breathe.

She always knew she was killing people, technically. She knew there were people on those battleships, flesh and blood people with thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears. The Galra army was not manned by droids alone, even though parts of her wished that were the case, but it was easier to overlook when there was so much distance between them and her. It was so much easier with all that space dividing them. She didn’t even have to confront it at first, not until Sendak, until Haxus survived the crash…

Haxus- Haxus, a hard, angular face she had buried in the darkest recesses of her mind with the sounds of his horrible final scream- he hadn’t exactly _tripped_ to his death. She had killed him outright, even if Rover had technically delivered the final blow. Rover was still an extension of her tactics, still her weapon, and had protected her, sacrificing itself to _kill_ Haxus the way it was programmed to- _the way she programmed it to_. It wasn’t that different from her bayard.

A painful electrocution, a swift evisceration, an intentional plummet…

All versions of a death she intended to deal out, culminating with that scream…

She would have killed him with her bare hands in that moment if she had to. Or she would have certainly tried.

‘ _Nothing stops me but victory or death_.’

It was her or him. Only one of them was going to leave that room alive. It was Pidge or Haxus. Living or dying. Facts. Undeniable facts. She was never going to be able let him walk out of there, and he wasn’t going to leave her breathing. Killing him was her only option. She had no choice.

But even then…

But this…

This…

This is the first time she ever saw the light leave someone’s eyes. This is the first time she’s _seen_ a life cut short.

The hulking Galra soldier whose neck she just shredded, whose head she nearly divided from their torso entirely with the blade of her bayard is crumpled and limp on the floor before her, what remains of a neck twisted at a violent angle from their body. She doesn’t need to check to know they’ve already gone cold. The massive, sparkling tangerine pool at her feet tells her everything she needs to know.

She killed them.

She killed them.

She killed them.

It was her or them, again. Again. It was her or them. She’s a soldier in a war she never asked for, a cub forced to fight as a lioness, a killer at fifteen.

A killer at fifteen.

She killed them. There is no denying this. She cannot shift this weight. This is her handiwork. There is no other answer.

She killed them.

**_She had no choice._ **

She had no choice.

 _Victory or death_ , the code deliberately written into every Galra, flesh or iron. There was no third option. She couldn’t think her way out of it. She couldn’t take that risk. She had to choose.

She had to choose.

And she chose to mete out death.

Her helmet thunks roughly over her head and snaps her back to her senses. She doesn’t let herself dwell on the blood now smearing between helmet and hair, transferring from her skin to her visor. The distant voice is clear in her ears now and she rounds to meet it.

Shiro recoils from the sharp end of her dripping spear with his hands raised defensively. His expression is barren of any fear though; only concern paints his features. Concern… and the ominous green light of her blade. The light is steady, unwavering, cold. His face is not the first Paladin’s to be painted with that light, not the first to be on the end of her blade when she’s covered in the blood of another. Pidge nearly drops her bayard completely before retracting it, making it small again, making it unimposing, unthreatening.

“We have ten minutes before the next scheduled patrol,” he says, using his ‘leader voice’ to drag her back to her senses. This was unexpected. Unscheduled. They can’t be sure they’ll have the full ten minutes before the sentry droids are supposed to come by. The unspoken half of the sentence hangs between them, etched into the way he takes a careful half step toward her and pulls her away from the pool of blood drowning the soles of her boots. Her shame strangles her throat from the inside- how _dare_ she be so weak. _This is a war. What the hell did she expect out here_.

He asks with his eyes, refusing to look at the dead Galra.

Do you want to finish?

Or do you want to just get the hell out of here?

Her eyes lock on the ugly gash on the underside of his jaw where the dead Galra soldier had gotten one of more than a few solid hits in. Canyons made by claws track through his breastplate, already closing up, not deep enough to wound him. ( _Unless he had been unarmored_ …) She can feel pain throbbing through their connection; his ribs ache fiercely, maybe broken, maybe bruised. Something feels pulled out of place, almost torn but not quite, a tendon in his right shoulder pushed too far. Adrenaline is pumping through his system at an alarming rate. A thin streak of blood runs down his neck and shines in the light. He’s a fighter, a survivor, powerful and fast, the soldier is lucky to have touched him at all. Landing a blow on the Black Paladin is no easy feat.

She hadn’t even heard the Galra come in. She hadn’t even realized something was wrong until the data stopped flowing- because Shiro had pulled his hand away from the console to fight, to protect her.

Those wounds, his injuries are _her fault_.

She let herself get too absorbed in her own head and put everyone at risk.

She doesn’t even realize she got hurt in the fight until she goes to speak and her mouth stings violently as she stretches an open wound on her face. Shiro had disarmed them, knocked them back. They went for Pidge instead of him, switching focus and lunging as they scrambled to their feet. They had slashed up, a flurry of claws and hulking muscle, aiming to take her head clean off but only nicking her face when she weaved backwards and her bayard transformed in her hands. The benefits to being tiny and quick on her feet. She tries not to think how death was only a few inches away. A few seconds away. It had all been so fast.

How, if she had hesitated…

The copper tang of her own blood meshes with the sharp pepper of the Galra’s and she struggles to speak, hiccupping through the boiling nausea in her gut.

Somehow she doubts Shiro would judge her for puking right now.

She appreciates that he doesn’t say anything when she does.

Dark red blood and thin green stomach bile blend together in the orange pool and the sight of it nearly makes her retch again. If the whimper that she makes is heard by the Black Paladin he says nothing.

Pidge inhales sharply through her nose and steels herself, tears of pain nipping at the corners of her eyes. She wipes her mouth across the side of her bicep down over the back of her forearm. She ignores the smear of muddy scarlet she leaves behind on the sharp white of her armor.

She will not leave without the data.

She will siphon every last drop of information from this station if it kills her.

Though, at this rate, she won’t be the one who ends up dead.

 

They set charges, improvising enough to cause some serious damage, make one hell of a fire and a beautiful distraction once Shiro hits the detonator, buy themselves enough time to escape, and then they run like they’ve never run before.

She never hears the sentries coming; she doubts Shiro ever did either. One moment she’s sprinting through the hallways toward the freedom and security of her waiting Lion and the next her entire side feels like it’s on fire, a spray of hot blood and ultraviolet light at the fringes of her vision as a bolt of plasma rips a hole straight through the back left hip and out the front side. A tiny part of her almost expects to see an ovary fly out and bounce across the tile like a fucking ping-pong ball. She’s almost disappointed when it doesn’t.

The Green Paladin’s own swear as she goes down surprises her.

“ _Stormtrooperfucker_ -”

It’s certainly one of her more _creative_ curses.

It’s also very appropriate, all things considered. The sentries certainly _aim_ like Stormtroopers. _How the hell did an eight foot tall machine even get a five foot target in the hip_?

 _THE HIP_.

She hits the ground so hard her vision whites out for a tick and a half.

A shrill, desperate shrieking pierces through the air and reverberates through the dark metal hallways.

For a long tick Pidge wonders who in the universe is making that _awful_ noise. Honestly, her head is _pounding_ , her brain is _spinning_ and she can barely _think_ , can whatever jackass currently screaming right now please just _shut the fuck up for five seconds_ …

And then she returns to her body and she realizes almost belatedly that _she_ is the one making that awful noise. She glances over her shoulder, trying to figure out why she’s sprawled on the cold floor, why she’s making such a ridiculous noise-

Oh.

Oh this…

This is _bad_.

An automatic door has clamped down hard on her left leg, right in the middle of her shin, and ignoring the mild splash of dark blood where flesh and bone flattens under steel nothing looks to be amiss. Her armor is probably going to need some serious de-scuffing after this though.

She can feel a sharp breeze on her face and she turns her head to meet Shiro’s wild-eyed gaze.

He says something, she can see his lips moving, but she can’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears.  His hands cradle her face and he repeats himself, lips moving in familiar patterns until Pidge can finally focus and start to read them through the spinning and pain pulsing up in waves through her body.

“You’re going to be fine. I promise. Just hang on.”

Pidge closes her eyes and nods, bowing her head toward the cold metal floor. Distantly she recognizes she’s still making agonized noises, shrill keening and pained groans, all just short of screaming outright, but she can’t find it in herself to hold them back. Distantly she knows the others can hear her, and she wants to hold this back, hold this in, she doesn’t want to scare them but _stars above_ she just _can’t_ … Distant voices thrum in her ears, chatter her pain-fogged brain can’t be bothered to interpret.

It’s not until Shiro’s arm suddenly scoops her up under her stomach and shifts her that she cries out again- her leg feels like it’s on fire, and every motion jostles the limb she knows in her gut is mangled as she’s dragged from under the door. She knows she’s screaming but she can’t stop herself, the pain is blinding and she can barely breathe.

She manages to catch her breath and buries her face in the side of Shiro’s neck when she stops moving, the brim of her helmet clunking against his, whining softly at how warm his body is. Cold, clammy sweat clings to every inch of her body under her suit and she feels a trembling wave roll down her spine.

“I need to carry you.”

She shakes her head violently. A swirling, unnatural wind brushes against her skin, seeps under her armor.

“You can’t walk, I need-”

“Hurts,” she hisses through her teeth, curling into his protective hold, curling closer to the terrified purr she can feel in his chest as he tries to comfort them both. The unnatural wind picks up speed, rushing faster. It stings against her flesh and forces her eyes nearly shut. “Don’t. Please don’t, Shiro. _Don’t make me, please don’t make me_ …”

He doesn’t give her a response. There isn’t time for a debate. She feels the fear, the love, the pounding in his heart and he scoops his left arm underneath her to hoist her up; she wraps her arms around his neck in a vice in response, wrapping her good leg over his waist as she whimpers into his neck. Her left leg screams up into her body and every nerve burns white-hot. She can feel blood pulsing, oozing, pooling in her boot, and when she peels her eyes open she sees a trail of blood streaking back toward the door, where a small melted opening is clawed (dug in like an animal, carved out by feral blazing fingers) into the metal. She doesn’t dare look down.

“ _Hang on Pidge_.”

That voice isn’t Shiro’s. She knows that. It’s physically distant, too openly afraid, a voice familiarly breathless and nauseas.

“Trying, Hunk,” she chokes out, and suddenly the world whirls past her face as the Black Paladin takes off in a dead sprint. The wind whips against her and whistles low in her ears as the hallways become a hazy black and purple blur.

Falling…

Twisting…

Spinning…

Her head is throbbing…

The hallways all look the same, why are there no numbers, no guiding signs…

They turn a corner and she can feel Shiro curse and she tightens her arms, bracing herself for whatever it is- Shiro is already backpedaling, readjusting his one-handed hold on the tiny Paladin as best he can, only for him to nearly lose his balance as he whips around and heads back the way they came.

She forces her eyes to stay open as she sees what it was that made him panic- a Galran commander and a contingent of sentries from one of the side passages.

And…

And a Rhodarian, dressed in faded mauve rags, handcuffed and skinny, standing defiantly between the sentry droids and the Paladins with a look of fearless wonder on their face as a gust of air blows their limp hair back.

The alien’s five burning red eyes lock onto Pidge’s face and she can just make out the soft gasp that comes from their lips- “ _Holt_?”

Pidge can’t stop herself from reaching out, she can’t believe what she just heard. Her head is ringing too loud, spinning too hard, everything is hazy, she’s loosing too much blood, she can’t have heard what she thinks she did. It’s not possible.

It’s not possible.

It’s not possible.

 _It is not fucking possible_.

_Right?_

She cranes her head at the alien standing between them and the Galra soldier and the droids that still remain frozen in place. The commander snarls out a command and a spray of mercury- no, blood, _blood that looks like mercury_ , silver blood, like a streak of moonlight- flashes up and the willowy alien crumples to the floor as the Paladins turn a corner.

There’s a furious shrieking that fills the frigid, surging air and this time Pidge doesn’t wonder where it’s coming from.

 

By the time they make it out to the Green Lion Pidge is dizzy, and she can’t make her hands curl no matter how hard she tries. Her grip around Shiro’s neck has gone slack and he has to support her weight entirely. The arctic hell of the moon’s surface burns against the heat of her open wounds even through the healed insulated layer of black fabric meant to protect her from such climates. Even her sealed helmet isn’t enough to keep the burn of the air from her face and she can feel the blood from the gash on her mouth pooling cool and sticky against her chin.

Then again, the weather might not be why she’s so cold.

Shiro’s voice comes out in a tense bark- “Hunk I need you _now_ , I can’t exactly fly the Green Lion and Pidge is in no state. Whatever it is you’re doing will have to wait.”

“M’fine,” she groans and opens her eyes, surprised to see the ceiling of her Lion’s chest, wondering to herself when they suddenly got inside of Green. The air is so warm here. A purr starts in her Lion but once it reaches her she howls- the vibrations are too much, it doesn’t help the way it should, it only hurts worse, and her spine arches off the metal as she screams. She goes limp when her Lion retracts the rumble as quickly as she had started it, washing a wave of steady mental energy over the girl in apology.

“ETA is five minutes, Shiro, that’s the best I can do right now. You’ll have to handle her until then.”

Pidge’s brows furrow. That’s not Hunk… Is it? He sounds far too calm. It’s Hunk’s _voice_ though…

“I can be there in less than thirty ticks.”

That is _definitely_ not Hunk.

“Princess-”

“I am already heading to-”

“Absolutely not,” Shiro nearly snarls out, staring at nothing. “You can’t come down here, Al- _Princess_. It’s not safe.”

“Safe? Pidge is _bleeding out_.”

“And I can stop the blood, I can help _her_ ,” the Black Paladin groans, tearing through the cabin for the medical supplies the Paladins had started to squirrel away inside of the Lions. “I can’t protect you if you enter atmosphere down here. We’re inside of an invisible Lion right now and behind a blizzard, they can’t see us, _we are safe_.”

“Lemme talk to her,” Pidge huffs, fingers twitching. It takes her a moment to realize she’s still wearing her helmet and she smiles, clearing her throat. “Right, ne’rmind. Allura, I’m _fine_. Tis but a flesh wound.”

“Pidge don’t lie to me, it’s hideously unladylike,” Allura laughs, high and breathy in her ears. The fond reference to a movie that had left Allura in stitches is enough to soften the mood a little. Just a little. A distant hissing and tearing touches her head and her left leg feels cooler than the rest of her body but she just closes her eyes. A sensation like heavy liquid that reminds her of that IV in the hospital starts to curl through her muscles and she feels lighter than normal. Maybe there are human-safe painkillers in their supplies too now?

“I ain’t no lady,” Pidge chuckles, yelping when firm pressure winds above her knee. She could swear she hears a voice in the distance murmur ‘ _I told you it’s a real word_ ’.

**_Sleep, cub._ **

She moans softly. “ _Nooo_ …”

**_Sleep. For me._ **

“ _Don’ wanna_ …”

 ** _Please cub. When you wake all will be well,_** Green rumbles softly, her purr nearly a whisper and twisted with pain. Her mental touch strokes across Pidge’s mind in that strange, familiar feline way, a rough tongue soothing over her hurt, a velvety nose pressed up against her thoughts and exhaling an ancient calm deep into her grey matter. **_Please cub. Sleep for me._**

Distant chatter reaches the girl’s ears, but none of it matters. ‘ _Who is she_ -?’ ‘ _What is that_?’ ‘ _The bleeding is letting up_.’ ‘ _The Lion_ …’‘ _I can be there in ten ticks, brace for impact_.’ ‘ _Be careful, Hunk, we’re not secured_.’ She trusts her Lion more than she trusts herself right now and she does as Green asks with only the mildest amount of complaining.

**_Sleep, my dear little cub. Please sleep._ **

“ _She- she’s unresponsive- please hurry_.”

**_Sleep my little love._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was not originally my intention when I wrote this to have Shiro dealing with yet another young Holt bleeding from a wound on their left leg just below the knee, but in hindsight I find it really fucking funny in a really fucking dark way. I mean, holy fuck Shiro, what did you do to piss off the universe like this.
> 
> I know Shiro made a dangerous call, but all things considered it was the best option. Grab her and risk her death, wait and risk getting shot in the heads, or wait and be captured risking Pidge’s life anyway- depending on how long it’d take them to lift that door the reintroduction of the blood from her lower leg (like an hour or two) would basically be like pouring sewage into her veins and she’d die of shock almost immediately. Or she’d bleed out slowly or risk fatal infection in captivity.
> 
> Besides, thanks to the door her leg above the wound was basically sealed like a potsticker wrapper, she wasn’t arterial bleeding. She had a chance.
> 
> So the grab and go was the only option.
> 
> I know way too much emergency medicine bullshit for someone who refuses to be a paramedic.
> 
> (So if you ever need to realistically maim a character for a fic without killing them, hit me up. I’m always happy to help.)
> 
> And now I refuse to beat on Pidge anymore, I’ve tormented this girl enough.
> 
> This is never going to be a ‘major character death’ fic, by the way. That’s a hard ‘no’ for me. I don’t enjoy reading it and I have no desire to write it. My only exception is a character dying in series; then I might, maybe, consider killing them off in the fic.


	33. Losing Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Losing control of yourself or of a situation is terrible. Losing control of both at the same time is terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who finally got their shit together and finished this fucking chapter? I won’t bore you all with the details of the past couple weeks but I can say it has been fun times, my dudes, fun times, with migraines and stomach flu and general misery oh my. My laptop has been having weird issues for like a week and a half on top of that and it’s kind of nerve-wracking because I’ve had it for like five years now so it’s just more crap on top of all the other crap.
> 
> Fun times.
> 
> Also I fixed Pidge’s memory-dream from forever ago, the one Shiro saw way back in ch25. I don’t know why I italicized the whole thing but that was a bad decision on my part so I edited it to read the way I originally wrote it. It’s been bugging me for a while and since I was drafting out other stuff I figured I needed to be consistent with that.
> 
> I should probably edit some of the earlier chapters, I’m sure there’re inconsistencies there with stuff I’ve forgotten to fix up and some typos or something that slipped through that I never caught.
> 
> That’s going to be like a whole weekend right there. Damn. Might as well though. I’ll probably do that after 35 goes up.
> 
> Not totally sure I'm satisfied with this, but I need to keep the story moving forward.

Pidge stumbles out of the healing pod and into a familiar body, bumping her nose against the flat chest and grunting softly in greeting.

A hundred thoughts and emotions flicker through all at once, some less intelligible than others as she sifts through the most obvious ones, the ones being transmitted on purpose- Exhaustion. Relief. Stress. _I haven’t slept. I’ve been here the whole time. You scared the hell out of us. I scared the hell out of Hunk._

But what she hears out loud is- “I think your legs are _actually_ harrier than mine, Pidge.”

She laughs and buries her face in the soft black cotton of his shirt, too tired to do anything more as she receives a warm, firm squeeze utterly saturated with brotherly affection from the purring figure she distantly recognizes as Keith. Even moving her arms seems like far too much of an effort right now so she just head-butts him in the sternum. “Shut up, you asshole.”

An indignant squawk sounds off to her right- “Language!”

They both laugh in that shared headspace of physical contact and Pidge amends her words; “Shut up, you butthole.”

“You know what, I’m counting that as a _win_.” And suddenly Pidge is scooped into a different set of arms and given a sincerely bone-crushing hug that makes her ribs creak under the pressure. She feels the relief coming off the Black Paladin in waves. “You worried us.”

 _You worried me_ , he means, the memories of her screams and her blood at the edges of his thoughts. He’s not sharing it on purpose the way Keith was just now, the way the arms of Voltron have learned to do after weeks together, this isn’t something he’s sharing on purpose and Pidge has half a mind to let him know that she can _hear_ him, that she can feel that darkly ironic parallel that he had to suppress when she went down. _I was so afraid_ …

She squirms and struggles lazily, yawning as she opens her eyes properly in the light.

“It was only my leg- hey,” she turns, looking over her shoulder at Shiro, “do I still have that leg or am I gonna get a prosthetic? Because if it’s the second one I have some ideas-”

“No, Pidge, no,” Hunk cuts in and steals her away from Shiro in his own crushing hug, a deep purr rumbling through him and vibrating down in her marrow. Pidge is starting to seriously question if anyone is going to let her walk anywhere today. Or at all. Ever. Ever again. “I already know exactly what you’re thinking and the answer is no.”

“You don’t know-”

“I know exactly, and you are not turning your leg into a shotgun.”

Well damn.

She pouts. “You just want to suck the joy out of everything, dude.”

“You and I both know that is my _entire_ job description. Besides, you still have the leg.”

Her shoulders go slack. “ _Huh_. Well, there’s always next time.”

Before the horrified, indignant response the Yellow Paladin is already forming can come out a voice Pidge hasn’t heard in _ages_ cuts through the air. “Okay so it sounds like we’re playing Pass the Pidge now, can someone toss the little gremlin my way or am I going to have to just echolocate my way over there?”

If Pidge was being honest her relationship to the Blue Paladin was probably the weakest; probably on the same footing as the relationship she had with Keith before they got all their bonding time recently, so it grew well enough over the initial months together, and they’d certainly had their moments as time went on, but they hadn’t bonded nearly as well as she had bonded with Hunk or with Shiro.

But here and now she’s wriggling herself free from Hunk’s arms with a truly violent struggle and launching herself across the room to crush Lance around the waist in a bear hug because she _missed him, damnit_. He wheezes and stumbles back in surprise before wrapping his arms over her shoulders in kind, laughing and questioning who she is and what she did with the real Pidge.

“I mean, not that I’m complaining,” he laughs as she crushes his waist. He feels skinnier. She squeezes harder and exhales into his chest with relief as it feels for the first time in she can’t remember how long like she’s complete again, and she knows the others feel the same way. “Real Pidge would have just punched me so this is a nice change of pace. I don’t know if I want Real Pidge back, I think I like Bodysnatcher Pidge. She’s way nicer.”

“I am Real Pidge, dickweed,” she huffs, using her formerly vicious nickname for him from the Garrison as she keeps her voice too low for anyone else to hear, “I can prove it too. I know that thing with Nyma was not the first time a pretty girl handcuffed you to a tree and ran off.”

The embarrassment he radiates is delicious and his voice cracks- “ _Hunk how could you tell her that_?”

“He didn’t, I was just playing,” she snickers. “You told me just now when you remembered it though. This new Paladin bond _rocks_. Also, why am I not surprised you have a thing for redheads?”

“ _NOPE_ ,” Lance flushes, shoving the Green Paladin back as far as his arms can manage. “I change my mind, I didn’t miss you at all. Back in the healing pod you go.”

“You love me and you know it.”

“No, I just love your inventions,” Lance teases, ruffling her hair. She socks him in the stomach- not hard enough to hurt, just enough to wind him a little. He wheezes anyway. “ _When’d you get muscles_?”

Pidge leans back and flexes one arm, looking down curiously as the black fabric of her suit strains. She does seem to have more meat on her biceps than she remembers. Certainly much more than she remembers having back on Earth. Distantly she hears Shiro behind her sniffle and murmur ‘ _they grow up so fast_ ’ and a snicker that sounds conspicuously like Hunk.

She makes a mental note to thank Allura later. This has _got_ to be her doing- so all those ass-kickings she dished out with that staff of hers weren’t for nothing after all.

She glances back up at Lance and he must feel her surprise because he cuts her off before she can ask.

“It’s only a concussion, some fluid buildup, blah blah blah, medicine medicine medicine,” Lance gestures with his hands, rolling his hazy eyes and propping one on his hip as he uses the other to puppet his words. But she can tell his casual tone is just as much for his own sake as it is for hers or anyone else’s. A sharpshooter who can’t see? “I’ll be fine in a week or two- but until then, everyone has to take turns playing guide dog for me. Whose turn is it again by the way?”

Shiro rolls his eyes fondly, clapping Lance on the shoulder.

“Come on, it’s late. Let’s get you to bed.” The Black Paladin turns to Pidge with a soft look. “You should get some rest too. There should still be leftovers from dinner in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

She nods and glances back around the room as Shiro guides Lance to the door. Keith has been picking up some of Pidge’s tricks, because when she wasn’t looking he disappeared. She’s almost proud.

Hunk hesitates in the doorway for a few seconds, lifting one hand as if to ask a question before deciding better of it and following Lance and Shiro out of the room.

She waits until the others are gone before she turns to Coran. “So what’s the damage?”

“Your leg is fine,” Coran nods, turning a small tablet toward her so she can see her own now-healed injuries as marked by the pods. “Muscles in your calf might be tense for a few days though, so don’t strain yourself during training. In fact maybe take a day or two off, massage the muscles if you need to. A lot of reparation went into that leg. And this little organ, right around here…”

He taps low on the screen, on her side, and she pulls one hand unconsciously to the spot on her body where she’d been shot.

“Not entirely sure what it is but it was a damn narrow miss all the same. There’s a whole tube of scar tissue through and through. I’m impressed it didn’t hit anything vital.”

“Am I lucky or what,” she chuckles and Coran shakes his head with a wry smile. Her left leg twinges and she makes a note to massage the hell out of her calf later.

“Or what indeed.”

Her stomach twists into nauseated knots at the faint smears of blood still left on the pod she was just in. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to it.

She feels like she will.

A few willowy bodies fill the other pods, but Pidge finds her eyes drawn to the nearest, a figure with navel-length hair and thick bandages around an abdomen slightly distended. They look eerily similar to the one she saw… the one with the blazing red eyes and the promise of knowledge she’ll never get to hear now. The shocked whisper of ‘ _Holt_ ’ tickles at her senses, tantalizing, dancing out of her reach when she goes to grasp it closer, question its existence, the moment sliding out of her hands like smoke.

She doesn’t dare speculate what it might mean.

Not yet.

She might not like the answer that she gets.

“Most of the Rhodarians were healthy enough to head home right away, but some of them had injuries that needed immediate tending. A few others are staying in guest quarters for when their friends wake up.”

Pidge nods, still looking at the one before her. That whisper, those eyes are gnawing at her…

“This one…?”

Coran sighs softly, shoulders limp. “Cut open like an animal. Apparently they were overdue.”

Pidge turns to Coran with an expression not quite horror and not quite confusion even as she’s already remembering what she was told before the rescue mission and putting the pieces together.

“The baby is with another one of the Rhodarians on the ship, one called Sheera. Allura is with them now going over the prisoner logs and surveillance data you downloaded.”

Her thighs press together involuntarily and a cold shudder runs along her spine.

Even after everything she’s read and seen, everything she’s learned, she shouldn’t be surprised. She shouldn’t be disturbed.

Yet she is.

 

Pidge gargles with shower water until her mouth doesn’t recognize the taste of her own teeth. The memories are fresh even if the taste of death on her tongue is not and she’d rather purge that before she has to deal with any more interaction in the next few days.

If she’s lucky she might be able to just avoid everyone for a day or two while she goes over everything in her head.

She throws her armor under the running hot water when she’s done scrubbing herself of her own grime, letting the blood wash away on its own, turning to face her reflection in the mirror. She’ll put the torn off leg back on once it’s all dry- she’s glad it can stitch itself together because if she had to sew it back up she’d just use duct tape and, well, wouldn’t that look silly.

She exhales before meeting her own gaze.

Time to see just how bad the damage is.

 _Scars are unseemly_.

Pidge nearly slaps herself across the face for that thought. How _dare_ she…

The scar tissue on her face is raw and pink looking. The wound on her face is deeper than she had thought it was. Two jagged, uneven tears where the very tips of massive claws had gone through flesh like it was warm butter pull up from the bottom right side of her jaw and the deeper one hooks into her lips, trailing to end just under the middle of her cheek, a shallow nick in the skin of her neck just below it hinting at a call closer than she’d thought it’d ever been. The right corner of her mouth quirks up in a tiny, permanent, mocking smirk. She touches the pad of one finger delicately against the skin, flinching and whimpering when the nerves flare under the contact.

That is _not_ supposed to happen. Is something wrong with the healing pods?

 ** _Apologies, cub,_** the sensation of the Green Lion rumbles through her mind, filling in space she hadn’t realized was empty. The Lion settles into her brain with a welcome weight and sprawls out like ivy through her head, inching through every part of the Paladin. ** _When wounds are healed enough, the pods ignore them. I did not intend to heal your face so much. As with the rest of you, when I shared my energy I only wanted to stop the bleeding._**

Green doesn’t say it, but the implication still hangs from the end of her sentence _\- I was afraid I would lose you_.

Pidge can’t really blame her, all things considered.

The memories tickle her senses and she remembers something she’d only just caught through the haze of pain and blood loss- she was her Lion’s little love. The thought is warm and honey sweet and she tucks it close for safe-keeping.

And maybe for teasing, once the incident isn’t _quite_ so fresh.

“Don’t apologize for that,” Pidge huffs, staring at the mouth of her reflection in the mirror. She tries to look on the bright side. A song her brother always sang starts up in the background of her thoughts. “Besides, I look pretty badass now. I mean, facial scars are _extra_ badass compared to regular scars. Sexy badass, even.”

Her Lion mentally smacks her in a gentle but scolding way and the young Paladin laughs. **_Your mother will be mad at me._**

“Yeah probably.”

She can feel the Lion react in such a way that if she had a jaw it would have hit the floor.

“I’m teasing, honestly,” she smiles, glancing back at her reflection, tilting her head to watch the movement of the skin as she speaks. It’s impressive the others weren’t staring at her face the whole time. Then again, they had a while to get used to the image. “She won’t be mad at you. And even if she was, it’s not like she can do anything to you.”

**_She could scold me._ **

The Green Paladin tilts one brow dryly. “You’re a giant mechanical elemental god cat that shoots lasers out of her tail. Somehow I don’t think a little yelling from a five foot human will do all that much to you.”

 ** _It would make me feel bad,_** Green rumbles lightly.

“Oh well _that_ changes everything,” Pidge snorts.

There’s a light rapping on the door and Pidge throws on her pilfered Earth bathrobe, tying a snug knot as she announces the door is unlocked. The door slides open just a crack.

“Talking to your Lion?”

“Yeah,” she huffs. “She’s pretty chatty.” Green gasps in playful affront.

Hunk nods as the door opens all the way. “I know the feeling.”

Several seconds pass before Pidge prods carefully, watching Hunk’s downcast eyes train steadily away from her face.

“Did you… need something? I mean, I assume you did if you came in…”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Something happened back on Sigyn and, I, uh, figured I’d come to you.”

The Green Paladin springs lightly up onto the counter and gestures to any of the other surfaces Hunk could sit on but he shakes his head, choosing to stand instead. His weight shifts lightly from side to side.

“When you got hurt…” he nods at her leg, and she keeps herself from covering the mottled tissue with her robe. There’s a soft ring of pale discoloration where the mangled, compressed section of flesh and bone was only a short time ago.

Somehow Pidge isn’t so sure she’ll make out of this war with all her limbs intact.

She thinks she’d be happy to go home with at least two of her original limbs. That’s probably a good number to aim for. A reasonable number, considering the circumstances. One Paladin of five is already short a limb, and that was before he ever even got into the war properly.

Yeah… Two limbs sounds reasonable.

“When you got hurt, Keith… he freaked. Not at first, at first he was keeping me from flipping, he was fine, but when you begged Shiro not to move you he went totally _off_. I mean, like, feral fire-breathing dragon off. I mean literal fire, it was- it was something else…”

He shakes his head, chewing on his lower lip and rubbing gently at his right bicep. Well, now Pidge has an idea as to what Keith meant when he said he scared the hell out of Hunk.

Actually she knows exactly what he means.

Though she’s far less bothered by the image, and for good reason.

“He wasn’t listening, it was like he didn’t hear me at all, I mean crap I’m lucky I didn’t hit him in the crossfire but he still got hurt. I bandaged him up earlier since he didn’t want anyone to know… He got sloppy, got slashed up pretty bad, broke a couple fingers, I think cracked something in his left forearm- there was a lot of pain there, I just… He was trying to hide it but before he did it felt awful.”

Pidge folds her hands in her lap, waiting for the eventual conclusion as the Yellow Paladin nears the end of his nervous rambling, twisting his fingers together awkwardly.

“I was going to try and coerce him into a pod tonight to at least get it down to manageable. I figure maybe you’d be able to convince him; that or I break out the big guns and get Shiro and I _really_ don’t want to do that after what just happened before with you and him and…” Hunk sighs, waving his hands loosely and trailing off.

He puts one hand on her shoulder, radiating a compassion that fills her with churning guilt.

“Something happened, right? Something happened to you two. You’ve been different ever since we all got back together. I didn’t want to say anything but I mean clearly- clearly it was _something_. What was it?”

Her face pulls into a tight frown and she tries to be gentle as she pushes Hunk’s hand off, slipping off the counter and striding for the door. “It’s nothing to worry yourself about, Hunk.”

He catches her forearm and spins her around to look pleadingly into her face. “Pidge, please, let me help. You’re my friends, let me help you.”

She hates herself for what she does next.

She looks up through her lashes and twists her brows together as she draws a lopsided, tired smile over her mouth (over the part that can move, the right side doesn’t seem to respond much so she refocuses her smile to the left) and speaks as gently as she can; “I promise it’s nothing you need to worry about. I’d tell you if it were. You know I would.”

That face has gotten her out of more well-meant social interrogations than she’s bothered to keep track of. It worked like a charm on her dad and worked better on her mom than she expected, and even Matt, who taught her the face, fell victim to it more often than not. And then after _Kerberos_ … Guidance counselors and teachers and friends have all fallen to the face. She knows what it can do. Hunk frowns softly but she sees him crack and she knows that it’s _working_.

“Promise?”

She nods.

“Pinky promise?”

She laughs, extending her hand to his as she blocks off her own self-loathing. “Pinky promise, Hunk.”

He engulfs her in a warm hug, sighing softly into her damp tangled hair before pulling away.

“You worry me Pidge.”

“Pretty sure that’s my _entire_ job description.”

**_He won’t let it go this easily._ **

She knows.

He is just as bad as she is. Allura with a crowbar couldn’t pry him off the scent now. She knows.

“Now if you don’t mind, I need to get dressed.” She gestures to the door with a flourish. “ _Vacate_.”

 

“Hunk told me you freaked out.”

Keith nearly jolts out of his skin, clutching his right hand over his heart as he reels around to face the Paladin that crept up on him and the plate he was holding clatters to the kitchen floor. Pidge folds her arms and stares at the tile between them.

“I am so sorry.”

“Pidge, no, don’t say that,” he says, putting one hand on her shoulder. She bites her lip, refusing to look up, staring resolutely ahead at his chest instead; he’s wearing one of her oversized hoodies. Explains why nobody noticed any bandaging or off body language. “It’s not like you got hurt on purpose.”

“But you still heard me- you heard-” she shakes her head, pulling her arms tight around herself. Her voice is strained and she feels the memories seeping through. “ _I can’t stop blaming myself for what happened_.”

The Red Paladin purses his lips and draws her into a one-armed hug, laughing weakly when she tries to protest.

She hides her face in his chest, the zipper of the jacket digging into her chin. “He told me you got hurt. When I screamed.”

“Only when you repeated something,” he sighs, settling his chin on her head. “I was handling it, and then I wasn’t. But that’s on me.”

“It’s my fault. That whole day was my fault, all of it…”

“It’s mine too, you know,” he sighs again. “I didn’t stop you. I could have stopped you, _I should have stopped you_ , and I didn’t.”

She doesn’t answer him, and he knows she doesn’t believe him.

“Let me see your hand.”

“No.”

She does a rough mental bristle, mentally jabbing the way Green taught her and glares up into his face. “ _Keith give me your hand_.”

He groans softly and pulls it out from the sweatshirt pocket, settling it in her hands and looking off at the wall. The Green Paladin waits until he pulls back that mental sort of curtain, letting her feel a fraction of the damage rather than hiding it outright. She can feel the throbbing pain in his clawed digits and up in his forearm and she frowns up at him. Something stinging along his back tells her that must be where he got cut up.

“You’re going in a pod tonight.”

“No I’m not,” he pulls back with narrowed dark violet eyes. “I’ll be fine Pidge.”

“I _will_ get Shiro, and he _will_ put you in a pod physically if he has to,” she threatens. He doesn’t waiver. “You can go in willingly or you can go in kicking and screaming, but you _are_ going to go in a healing pod Keith. I will get _Allura_ if I have to.”

Nothing.

She didn’t want to do this… But he’s forcing her hand.

She gets the big guns out.

“Don’t make me get Coran.”

“ _Fine_.”

 

She checks the time in the Castle, rubbing sleepily at her face as she pulls her knees closer and stares into the corner of her tablet screen. It’s only midnight, hardly early enough for her to be this tired. Hunk is fiddling with the downloader she used on Serva Nine and running a diagnostic using her laptop. His treeca is sitting in front of Keith’s pod, occasionally pawing at the glass and chirping softly. She tries to ignore it and go back to reading, practicing her Altean for the evening as she leans against the wall. It’s not clicking quite as naturally as Galra; but then she’s been practicing it far less, so of course it’s harder to read.

A soft ding catches her attention and she glances back over to Hunk lightly turning the device over in one hand.

“There was blood in the port, Pidge, blood and soot,” Hunk murmurs, not glancing up from the computer. She keeps her territorial twitchy fingers in check as he types- he’s not going to see anything he shouldn’t. She was careful. She can let him borrow her machine. It’ll tell her if he crosses a line. “I cleaned it earlier. Took it apart. How’d blood and soot get in the port?”

She shrugs lightly. “Long story.”

Hunk sits up straighter, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck out. “I haven’t got anything better to do.”

She bites her lip, making eye contact with the Yellow Paladin sitting a few feet away. He inclines his head in an encouraging gesture, one leg bouncing with tired restlessness.

“I’d rather not Hunk, not right now.” He frowns softly. “Was that the problem?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Looks like it’s a problem with wherever your data was sourced from,” he sighs, knowing he’s not going to get an answer to the unasked but obvious question of ‘where’.

Pidge grunts in surprise.

Hunk drums his fingers on one knee. “You sure you don’t…?”

“Buddy, come on,” she chuckles and stretches her legs out in front of her, pointing and curling her toes. “If you’re that curious you and I both know you’ll just read my diary. Again. But first, you gotta _find_ it.”

“Don’t underestimate me Pidge; I’m an excellent finder,” he laughs softly, the smile not reaching his eyes.

 

She’s waiting with warm Altean tea when Keith comes out of it, gently rubbing Hunk’s space cat between its long velvety ears. Hunk is putting her laptop in her lab now; she’d asked Green to get the other Lions to have Hunk leave the room for a minute so she could talk to the Red Paladin when he woke up, tell him about a revelation she’d had before she got hurt that had come back to her while she was waiting.

She’s a little surprised Yellow went along with deceiving her Paladin, but then again maybe it’s more of a ‘you didn’t ask’ situation with her. She simply let her Paladin believe he’d be back before Keith was out.

Maybe Yellow is all about ‘my exact words were’. Either way…

Keith sets a hand gently on the Green Paladin’s fluffy hair for balance as he shakes his head to clear it of the haze and she makes damn sure he knows it’s a good thing she likes him or else she’d never tolerate this kind of crap. The lazy affection she feels in response tells her he’s not buying it for a second.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

One bleary eye flicks down to look at her. “Aren’t you doing that right now?”

It’s a _damn_ good thing she likes him because she is _very_ tempted to smack that teasing smirk off his face.

She doesn’t bother mincing words as Green warns her of the Yellow Paladin’s impending return.

“I had a moment of clarity while we were back there, back before I got shot and everything…” she starts, pulling back. She’d gotten so lost in her head back there… “She was wrong. I don’t enjoy… I don’t enjoy it. I don’t like seeing what I’m capable of. I don’t…”

_I don’t like it the way she made me think I did._

“You were…” he opens and closes his mouth a few times, furrowing his brows, “don’t tell me you started _believing_ her, Pidge.”

The Green Paladin crosses her arms defensively. “I know you do too, I can feel it. I can see it in your nightmares. You don’t want to any more than I do, but you believed her too.”

“It’s hard not to.” The sentence is unfinished but Pidge can still hear the tail end of it even without contact, she knows _exactly_ how that sentence ends, she’s heard it in his head enough- _After what I nearly did to you_.

Nevermind that she’s still _alive_ because of him, no, not when she still nearly died…

She’d said some shit thinking fully that she wasn’t going to get another chance to say those words, and she regrets all of it, putting all of that on his shoulders.

She exhales softly.

Pidge reaches for the floating tray, taking a warm mug in each hand and pushing one into the Red Paladin’s hands with a tired shrug as she inhales the smell of quickly cooling tea. He watches the raw scar on her mouth stretch as she purses her lips in a tight line and she imagines the same dark whisper she remembered is floating around in his head too. “I know, Keith. I know.”

 

The three limbs of Voltron hesitate when they spot a shadow pacing restlessly at the end of the hall outside of Pidge’s new room. It pauses and glances up at them and they all recognize Shiro’s broad-shouldered silhouette in the low light. Keith ducks into his room before anyone can say anything, parting from them without even a half-hearted goodnight. The Green Paladin doesn’t take it personally even though it stings a little.

She can’t really blame him.

Pidge and Hunk part ways at his door and he gives her shoulder a light squeeze before disappearing into his own room.

“Am I just everybody’s favorite person today or what?” Pidge laughs weakly as she pauses outside her room, looking up into the exhausted eyes of the Black Paladin. “I mean the attention is nice, don’t get me wrong, but it feels kinda unnecessary. I mean I’m a little banged up, sure, but I’m ok.”

Shiro folds his arms over his chest with a tired sigh but a gentle smile tugs at his mouth and he leans his weight on one shoulder against the wall.

“You doing alright?”

“For now,” she shrugs, mirroring the pose and leaning heavily against the cold metal of the wall.

“You did good back there.”

“I froze up.”

“Only when the danger had passed. That’s a good time to freeze up.”

They both skirt around the dead Galra, the one Pidge can still see behind her eyelids, still taste on her lips. A soft _wsh_ catches their ears and they tilt their heads; if Pidge had to guess, Hunk’s door just opened a crack.

She wishes she could blame him, but she’d probably do the same thing if the roles were reversed.

“I saw something in your head,” Shiro trails off, rubbing one bicep with a hand slowly. “Nothing clear, but it was more of a concept. If I had to take a shot in the dark I’d say it was from Se-”

“From Nine, yeah,” she nods, glancing back carefully. “It probably was.”

The Black Paladin catches on and keeps going. “I just… I understand that thought, at least. You shouldn’t have had to do that. None of us should have to do what we’re doing.”

Her throat twists with hot shame and she nods, unsure she’d be able to push out any kind of a response.

“You really should talk about that, with me or with Allura or Coran, with someone.” He sighs softly. “Coran is a very good ear if you need it. Allura too.”

“Can I, uh,” she manages, gesturing at her door. Shiro takes a step back.

“Right, sorry. You know where I am if you need me. Get some rest, Pidge.”

“In a little,” she huffs, pulling her arms around herself as she pushes off the wall.

Shiro gives her his best concerned big brother face.

“My brain’s doing that thing it does sometimes,” she smiles and shrugs, “where it just kinda… goes in a hundred directions at top speed and needs something to hone in on, I just need a distraction for a little while. I was just gonna go down to the lab for an hour or two first, get some work done.”

He nods and lets his shoulders go slack. He doesn’t like when she pulls all-nighters, but he also spent enough time with Matt to know it’s how they both try to cope after a bad day. Whether or not it actually works that well… “Of course, Pidge. Sleep in as long as you want tomorrow.”

He takes a half step forward and warm, chapped lips brush her forehead.

“Take care of yourself, little bird.”

She groans and drags one hand down her now violently pink face. “Oh god they told you that?”

“They may or may not have mentioned it,” he shrugs lightly, mischief in his stormy eyes. The childhood nickname she had stubbornly shed when she was six, only to ask for it back when she was sick and bedridden at the age of ten with a truly nasty bug. Of course Matt and dad would tell him that story. Shiro brushes at her choppy bangs, now pushed sharply aside as they’ve grown well past her eyes, letting the cool metal of his hand brush her temple. “I guess you didn’t catch everything I said back there, huh?”

She tilts her head lightly to the contact with a tired sigh. “I caught enough.”

He nods with pursed lips, stepping past her slowly.

“Do get some sleep, if you can.”

“I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask.”

 

The Green Paladin pulls a thick blanket back up around her shoulders where it’s starting to droop, shaking her head as the fabric stubbornly refuses to comply. Green rumbles low in her skull with a constant soothing drone like mental massage. Her legs are crossed underneath her in the chair and she’s got one of her droid projects open like a dissected frog on her desk, waiting with exposed wires for her to finish polishing it up.

It’s a little sentry, custom built, a design she’s always been inordinately fond of, round and bouncy and shaped in such a way that she knows for a fact will be referred to by any number of movie references rather than the name she’s giving it- Curiosity, or Curie for short.

But she can’t seem to focus and pushes off the desk instead, pushing her chair back a few inches with a low groan. Her eyes flicker down at the scar on her calf and she brushes her fingers over the pale ring.

She appreciates the scars, as much as she finds them distressing. It’s proof that something happened, proof she survived the kinds of things people normally don’t survive. Proof of her memories, factual evidence of her stories.

Even if she wonders…

What are the pod’s long-term effects?

How much will she change over the years? Will living in space long-term have any odd effects on her growing body?

Is it healthy to be able to jump right back into the fray after having suffered a wound that, by all rights should have been fatal, acting as if it had never happened?

Would she someday find getting stabbed to be a minor inconvenience?

Would she grow used to pain?

Will she grow older? Or will the pods…?

Her thoughts trail off into the haze of exhaustion as she digs the pads of her fingers into the meat of her calf, against the ring of scar tissue, slowly driving out the tension in her muscles as the rumble of her Lion drives out the tension in her brain. One elbow settles on the desk as she bites her lower lip roughly in her teeth, massaging her leg with enough force that it stings.

She can’t help but wonder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok seriously there’ve been a ton of new readers lately and I love you all and I’m so glad you’re here but where the fuck are you coming from? This has been going since like September I think, so why now? I do actually want to know like why you picked up the story now, was there a particular reason or did you just see the word count and go “challenge accepted”? Anon is always on over on tumblr if you want, I’m also calicotomcat over there, I’d be happy to answer asks, I’m usually on over there anyway so I’ll probably get back to you faster than you might expect.
> 
> (Also, who here is thinking of going to the Tampa Metrocon in August? Just me? I wouldn’t be able to have a costume ready for any of the stuff in Orlando sadly, so I’m planning ahead on the infinitesimally small chance that I can go to Metrocon. I’m trying to convince my partner to do a couple cosplay with me, and I think it’s working. Stroke egos kids, that’s how you get what you want, especially from men. Stroke a man’s ego and he will do anything. It’s awesome.
> 
> Lifehacks.)


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